


the lucky one

by oftachancer



Series: here in this moment [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tevinter Imperium, Angst, Blood Magic, Branching narrative, Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, Doppelganger, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Lyrium Ritual, M/M, Memory Loss, Multi, Multiverse, Non-Consensual Drug Use, PTSD, Prophecy, Slavery, Temple of Mythal, Time Travel, Utter Perplexity, various povs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2019-08-11 04:18:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16468571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oftachancer/pseuds/oftachancer
Summary: Aran Trevelyan - the seventh scion of Ostwick's Bann Trevelyan - had led a sheltered life at the Starkhaven Chantry as a historian and archivist's assistant. He's been thrust into multiple wars, has died and risen twice, been possessed by a demon once, and has a piece of the Fade permanently stuck in his palm.But nothing prepared him for what would happen when a traitor to the Inquisition stabbed him with a strange, glowing green dagger. In the blink of a cosmic clock, he went from Skyhold to the Free Marches, which could have been fun... but for the fact he was trapped alone underground in a tomb, bleeding from his injuries and unable to even look Death in the face due to the darkness.Fortunately, there's a reason he's the Inquisitor. He has a knack for making friends and finding help. This whole bouncing around time, trying to put things right thing, though? Oh, boy, it's hard. Now, if only he could find his way home.





	1. light your way

**Author's Note:**

> This series will be updated when I am happy with the way I have portrayed the various scenes. It's all been written. I'm just refining and sometimes rewriting for POV, etc. If you would like, you can pop ahead to 'I... I am', which is where this set of time travel returns to the original timeline...
> 
> [Tags will be added as situations arise to warrant them. Don't want to ruin everything there, do I? It's a madhouse, wild ride through a series of branching narrative alternate universes.]

Aran skinned his knees and palms as he catapulted into solid, rough rock. His pained, shocked shout echoed endlessly around him in the dark. Pitch dark. “Hello?” he called and his own voice called back to him over and over and over again. 

He shivered, curling in himself, as ragged pain blossomed anew. Tried to focus. ‘The dead don’t feel pain’, he heard Cole’s voice in his head. So he wasn’t dead. “Cole?” Cole’s name pulsed in his eardrums. Cold. Side. Right side. Beneath the ribs. Wet. He carefully prodded the tear in his shirt with his fingers. It was too dark. Blind? Had he somehow lost his sight? He blinked hard, waving his hand closer and closer to his face until he touched his nose and still could not even see the outline of his hand. What was worse? To succumb to the cold or bleed out? He pulled his shirt over his head, shuddering again with the cold, and wadded the greatest part of it up against the wound in his side, using the arms to try to tie it into place. It wasn’t the best, but it was what he had. 

The sting and pain kept him in the moment, kept him alert, as long as he could cling to them. He had to be somewhere. He was breathing, for one, and there was an echo. Which meant a contained space. A room, large enough for the sound to bounce through. 

He crawled, inch after painful inch, patting the cold stone ahead of him as he went. He was trying not to think too much. Right now, with the blood pooling out of him and the cold seeping in, thinking would lead to panic. He had no idea where he was, how he’d gotten here, how to get out, how long he had before blood loss made him lose consciousness. 

Eventually, his fingers brushed floor that bent. Bent? He pressed his hand up, up… a wall. Smoother than the floor. A smooth stone wall. Which meant people. So it was a room of some kind. A cold, dark room, true, but better than some alternatives. He skimmed his fingers along the wall. What was a better use of energy? Crawling or trying to stand? If he tried and then fell, he might worsen the injuries. Then again, crawling with a gaping hole in his side wasn’t much better.

He leaned his shoulders back against the wall, breathing, flexing his hands. So strange how small tears could hurt so differently. Sharper. A flicker of light nearly blinded him. He stared where the light had been. Where his left hand was sitting on his knee. “Maker, I’m an idiot.” 

Worth the risk, he wondered? Opening a rift could bring spirits through, and he was in no shape to fight. But the light… if he could just get some light without a full rift? Was that possible? Just a tiny, tiny crack in the seal. Another blinding flicker, shaking. “Fucking freezing,” he muttered. He shut his eyes, flexed his hand, welcoming the pull of torn skin, the stomach-churning feeling of the anchor’s flux. Here and there. Just a glimmer. Just a little.

He opened his eyes and found a soft veil of light filtering out from his hand, a pale green glow. He brought it closer to his side, carefully peeling back his ersatz bandage. The cut was deep, ragged, curving just beneath his lowest rib. He tilted his head back when he caught sight of bone glinting. “No. Getting out of here. Finding out where I am and getting out. Going home. Do you hear that, Dorian? Cole?” 

Carefully, using the wall, he climbed to his feet. 

Focus. 

He followed the wall until he found a corner. Spiderwebs and fragments of clay pots. Behind him, a streak of blood remained on the stone where his fingers had touched. He kept walking. Kept going. Wall, more wall… he frowned. Cage? He wrapped his fingers around the freezing metal bars. Some dungeon, maybe?

He followed the bars, squinting inside. A brazier. Books. More pots, urns… Temple? Vault? Another cage. Back to wall. The ground felt less even. The air churned. “Shit,” he said as his legs gave out from underneath him. 

He woke to fingers pressing at his hand. He jerked, squinting up at the faces in the torchlight. Narrow features with wide almond eyes surrounded by tattoos of various designs - tree branches, leaves, vines. “Dalish,” he whispered.

“ _Garas quenathra_?”

He peered blearily at the speaker, trying to remember what that meant. Had he ever learned those words? He’d read treatises on the Dalish, but only small bits in the actual language. What was ‘help’ - that would be useful. “ _Mana_ ,” he rasped. “ _Ma halani._ ”

“You speak our tongue, but you are not Vhen.” The woman closest to him pointed to his hand, “Why do you bear our old words?”

“I touched an elven artifact. It was being used by…” it was hard to think, “a man who wants to be a god. To break the walls of the Black City. It… became part of me.”

“You wanted to help this man?”

“No. Never. Trying- trying to stop him.” He shivered. “I’m dying.”

She frowned. “Are you a devotee of Ghilan’nain? How did you come to be within her temple?”

“Please. _Mana._ I can’t-“

She looked to the others, faces lit by torch-light, flickering in the dark. “Take him.”

The next time he opened his eyes, he was staring up at stars stuttering above in a sky torn asunder, but he was warm. A nearby fire brought feeling back to his limbs. A sour smelling salve was lathered on his cuts, covered in leaves and packed mud. ” _Sahlin inan_!” a boy called from beside him, roasting a piece of meat on the end of a stick. 

The woman from before padded across the camp, a baby lolling at her hip in a wide pouch. Her vallaslin speared down the center line of her face, gathering and brushing out across her cheeks like feathers. Her hair was long and straight, flecks of copper in the warm brown where it caught the light, hanging in long braids to her hips. “You live,” she said.

“Thank you.” He licked his dry lips, “ _Ma serannas._ ”

“Where did you learn our tongue?” She asked, settling to a low stool beside the skin he was laid out on. 

“That’s about the entirety of what I know,” he admitted. “Hello, help, thank you, and a couple songs.”

“Where?” She asked again.

“Books,” he looked down at his hand, the soft glow still there. “There were a couple clans near the chantry where I studied, the Senlasan and the Lavellan. I wanted to learn about them.”

She was impossible to read. The baby at her hip gurgled and she offered it her knuckle to gnaw on. “Why?”

“Because I didn’t know anything about them. Because no one really did.”

She seemed to consider that for a long time. He swallowed, pressing his lips together. “How did you get into the temple?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” She stared at him, waiting. “I was in the Frostback mountains. Someone stabbed me with a… I don’t know what it was. Some kind of handheld sickle.” She was still staring. “That’s it. That’s the whole story.” He shut his eyes, “I don’t know. It… had jewels on it. One big one, green, not emerald - I don’t know much about gemstones. And there was writing on it, I think, or that could have just been the fuller. I didn’t have a chance to study the thing since… you know… it was stabbing me.” 

The fire crackled. Somewhere nearby, children whispered and laughed quietly. The baby cooed softly. “Where is the artifact now? The one you touched.”

“He has it. The monster. Corypheus.” A murmur made him open his eyes. A couple of the other elves. “You know his name? He’s evil, do you understand? He’s killed hundreds of people. He’s got a cult of insane Tevinter mages worshipping him. I have to get back.”

“Get back where?”

“The Inquisition. We were fighting to stop-“

“Shemlen fighting amongst themselves when the ancient beast bears the wisdom of our ancestors as weaponry.” Her voice was a rush of fury, though her expression remained placid. “I will not go back to them. They treated me as a prisoner.” Slowly, she began unwrapping her hand from the bands of leather that had enclosed it. Green, gleaming Fadelight speared through, bright and strong.

How had no one told him _someone else_ had the same mark? Not even a single mention? Was it because she had escaped and he hadn’t? Or because she was Dalish and he was human? She was working for her people the same way he was working for his. If they could all be on the same page, how much more could they accomplish? Especially considering how much elven history seemed to be playing a role in the Breach. “Hey, me too,” he told her with feeling. She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not lying. They did.”

“Because of the mark we bear.”

“Solas calls it an anchor.”

“I have heard this name - Solas - but he is not one of us. He walks outside the path.” She sighed, looking back and nodding. One of the other Dalish, a man with a series of short brown braids around his face, stepped forward to take the baby from her arms. “You will tell me what you know of this ‘anchor’. What they know of it.” She narrowed her eyes, “All of it.”

“Where do you want me to start?”

They talked through the night, him answering her questions one by one until the dawn peeked across the sky. The daylight combing through the clouds, lighting the distinct black-barked birches made him sit up, wincing. “Wait...what- this is… we’re in the Marches?”

“Yes,” she agreed. The camp was already beginning to bustle, children running in circles, hunters loading arrows into quivers and setting off into the forest. “I am Neriel. Dirthara’enasal for the Lavellan clan and the People of the Dales.” She met his eyes. “You will help me save my people from this menace, Aran of Ostwick.” 

There were rules. He wasn’t to speak to the children or touch them. He was to bathe downstream from the clan. He wasn’t to attempt to leave. The whole situation reminded him strangely of his first weeks with the Inquisition: enormous responsibility and complete lack of freedom. Nevertheless, he ate and slept among them, though his hands were bound when he laid down each night. He was still healing and they had no intention of letting him die of hypothermia. 

Everywhere the aravel traveled, they seemed to come upon destruction. Houses burned, farms abandoned. They spent a good deal of time harvesting wheat and corn and vegetables from those uninhabited plots of land, searching the empty embers of houses for anything of value they might be able to trade later.

And Aran learned… so much more than had ever been in the books he’d read. How to spread charcoal powder under his eyes to prevent the glare from the snow. How to make cheese from halla milk. How to study the smoke rising from the fire to predict oncoming storms or clear weather. A week went by, then two. They closed rifts, the same familiar rhythm, only it was quicker with he and Neriel working in random, taking turns breaking down the rift’s defenses while the other joined in the fight against whatever demons spilled from it. 

She handed him a piece of bread and cheese as they rode beside the aravel, keeping watch. “At least let me send word to my people that I lived,” he whispered. The babies were sleeping inside. “Please.” 

“We do not have clan to spare for sending messages across the Waking Sea and into mountains.”

“Starkhaven or Kirkwall, then- there are chantries where I could leave a message that would get to them.”

“And then what?” They had reached a kind of peace, and though none of them fully trusted him, he had proved himself to some small measure. They’d told him as much, with actions more than words. They weren’t unkind. Neriel wasn’t. “The shem are mad. They will come, either to take you or destroy you.”

“Please, Neriel, the people in the Inquisition are not crazy. Not like those we’ve seen here. They’re good people doing their best and they’re my friends. I don’t even know what they think happened to me, or what happened to the woman who stabbed me-“

“ _Ir abelas_. I hear your sorrow, but we cannot. If you would allow wisdom to nurture your heart, you would understand.” 

They killed more demons. They watched the smoke rise over Kirkwall from the shadow of the trees, then continued on. He skinned rabbits and peeled potatoes. They stopped putting the bindings on when he slept. He thought of running, but where? Kirkwall, which seemed to be overrun with abominations? Ostwick was overrun with darkspawn. Starkhaven refused entry to the aravel, the guards not caring who he said he was. 

_Dorian_ , he thought. _What are you thinking? Does Cole know? Can he feel me out here, at least enough to let you know I live?_

He wrapped leather bindings around his hand to hide his palm in the night when they scouted ahead. He accepted the leather and sheepskin clothing they gave him as the winds chilled, wrapping a warm cloth around his face and head to preserve his own body heat. He fell into the rhythm of the aravel as they traveled further east, then began making their way south. Like a school of fish, the clan gathered other clans to them, moving in droves, then splitting off into safer territories as the Lavellans moved on. 

“If there is a chantry standing in Montfort,” Neriel said one day, apropos of nothing, “you may send word to your friends. Keeper Thoriel and I agree.”

He hugged her, drawing a surprised laugh from the stern woman, and no one pointed an arrow at him. “ _Ma serannas,_ ” he beamed at her. “Truly. Thank you.”

“Hn. Hold Halladin,” she said, passing the child into his arms. “I need to check with the scouts.”

He cradled the baby to his chest, protecting her head, smelling her warm, sweet baby hair. “ _Iras ma ghilas, da'len, ara ma'nedan ashir. Dirthara lothlenan'as bal emma mala dir…_ ” he sang quietly while those chubby little fingers wound into the sheepskin of his coat. She didn’t seem to mind his tone-deaf rendering, just snuggled closer. 

There was a Chantry standing in Montfort and he even found an Inquisition scout, though the man didn’t recognize him at all. Leliana’s scouts were far and wide, though. It was possible… possible that they only knew him as the Herald of Andraste and not by name, but he had never liked using that title. Never wanted it. He frowned, “Just… tell the Nightingale that the scout who was wounded at Skyhold yet lives. Can you do that?”

“I can do that, serah.”

Mad. He had to think that he was mad, a Marcher standing there in Dalish garb, eyes blacked out for the sun, talking nonsense. “ _Ma se_ \- thank you.” When he returned to the aravel, Neriel looked over from her bond-mate’s side, a surprised tilt to her brows. 

“I half expected you to stay there, or find yourself a mount and ride off.”

“I gave my word to help you and I will. I would be doing much the same work with them. And if they need more of me, a message will be waiting in Serault.” Leliana would figure something out, some way for them to all work together. Dorian. Dorian would understand, he prayed. 

“Then we will approach Serault with caution when we come to it,” she nodded. “Come. The Marshes await.”

“The-” She’d never told him where they were going before. Only told him what she expected from him moment to moment. ‘Go hunt with Deras.’ ‘Clean the roots for supper.’ ‘Kill these demons.’ ‘Talk to those shem.’ “Nahasin Marshes?” he asked.

She swung up onto her mount, “There are several rifts in the Marshes that need sealing. The Talaselin do not wish to leave and if they are safe, with enough hunting, we may be able to send other clans here for safety once we’ve cleared it.”

He jogged along beside her as she rode back to the aravel. “There are Dalish in the Marshes?”

“There are Dalish everywhere, shem.”

Aran bowed his head as he matched the pace of the halla. He stopped, panting when she drew short and walked the horned beast around him. 

“You have learned to hold your tongue.” Maker, she was hard to read. Years of hiding her thoughts from human merchants and mercenaries had trained her to remain impassive in the worst of circumstances. “You will come with me to the Talaselin. We will close their rifts. Showing them our joined power will strengthen their faith in us.”


	2. give a smile back to you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The journey continues from 9:42 Dragon in the Nahasin Marshes to 9:44 Dragon in the Tevinter Imperium. Aran begins to learn about his very strange, very unique situation.

Aran woke with a start, spitting moss and sand. He’d seen them coming from miles away, flying the Inquisition banners. Hold your fire, he’d told Neriel. They’re friends, he’d told her. He’d let them waltz right into their camp and they’d knocked him out. 

Fucking spies, you never knew whose side they would be on. 

Strange that the sand was so soft. 

No. Not sand. A rug. Deep and soft, threaded with gold. His hands sank into it as he pushed himself to his knees, looking around. 

The walls were white marble, inlaid gold markings twisting up from floor to ceiling and across to the surging magefire overhead. The light seemed to come from everywhere, warm, suffusing sunlight despite the lack of windows. He stood slowly, cradling his head, feeling for his weapons. He still had his daggers at his sides, and the pouch strapped to his left leg still held potions. He drank one of the elfroot concoctions. At the far wall, a series of desks and tables held various instruments and tablets. He picked up one of the nearest texts and squinted. Tevene, he was fairly sure, but it was an archaic script… He tossed the book to the side and nudged through the parchment. Notes. That handwriting... That- he jerked as the door opened behind him, a blade already flipped in his hand and ready to throw. 

“Aran. There you are.” That dripping, decadent voice poured relief through him like warm honey. 

“Dorian- Ah, Maker- you’re a sight for sore eyes,” he swallowed, dragging his gaze over the man. Dorian was all in trailing black robes that brought out the darkness of his eyes, threaded through with gold and blue that lifted his caramel skin and the myriad gleaming rings on his fingers to perfection. A delicate gold ring danced between his nostrils, more rings and spears of gold crested up around the shells of his ears. When had he gotten that getup? Why was this the first he was seeing it? Merciful gods, he was beautiful. Like living art. 

“What are you wearing?” That art chided kindly, opening his arms just in time for Aran to catapult into them. “Ah… the sweet scent of sweat and rain-soaked sheep. I have missed you.” Nevertheless, those warm, soft hands cupped his cheeks and lifted his chin, lips pressing warm and sweet against his own, kissing away the marsh sand that coated his tongue. “You are a mess. Baths, I think.” 

“I know,” he pressed his cheek into Dorian’s palm, his gaze dropped to his lover’s lips and the slight frown there. “Hey. It’s okay, Dorian. I’m okay. You caught them, didn’t you? The fake scouts? We couldn’t have that many agents turning at once-” He kissed Dorian’s questing fingertips as they traced the side of his face, his neck, “What’s wrong?”

“No scars,” he murmured.

“She stabbed me in the side, not the face,” Aran cocked his head to the side, looking around. “Where did you find this place?”

“Find… Ah. Well.” Dorian kissed him again, seeming to come to some sort of conclusion, “Let’s get you to the baths. I’ll explain when we get there. Yes?” He stepped back into the hall, drawing Aran with him, heedless of the sand and blood and stink transferring from Adan’s soiled leathers to his robes. 

White marble here, too, flat and smooth and gleaming. More gold. Detailed, jewel-encrusted tapestries hung here and there. Interlocking silver rings creating rotating spheres. “Hard to imagine this in the Marshes,” he breathed. An elf wearing draping grey robes caught sight of them at the corner and stared. “Aneth ara,” Aran brushed his fingers up the side of his face in greeting. 

The young woman eyed him strangely, “Ah… your Grace, may I be of assistance?”

“She’s young,” Dorian whispered - loudly and clearly with the full intent of being heard - against the side of Aran’s head. “And foolish. Don’t go pouring your power into her just yet. Although she might make a pretty husk.” The girl swallowed nervously, eyes darting. “Run along and tell your master We have more pressing engagements at this time. We will send word to reschedule his _enthymema_.”

She curtsied quickly and hurried off.

“What-“ 

Dorian nipped at his ear, “Not here, Amatus.”

Aran shivered at the touch, the breath, the words, and allowed himself to be steered along elegantly appointed halls, through intricately carved doors, down smoothly sculpted stairs… He caught his breath at the misty pools. They were beautiful; fine, elegantly painted tiles and gleaming mosaics of gems and stone surrounded each natural pool. Steam swelled from them: warm and inviting. He caught his breath again as Dorian’s fingers brushed over the ties and clasps of his armor, undoing them with thoughtful movements. “Dorian-“

“I’m always impressed by how intricate some of these knots are, for Dalish heathens. It is the Dalish, yes?”

“ _Neriel_ -“ Aran looked up from Dorian’s skillful hands, shamed, “Maker, they didn’t hurt her, did they? What happened to the scouts?”

“I do not know,” Dorian kissed his cheek, “but I do know that you will see her again. So you can rest in that assurance. Ah, look at you,” he hissed with sympathy, peeling the armor and soggy sheepskin away to peer at the roughly healed wound in his side. “Little I can do for it now. Are you wounded now? Should I call the healers?”

“No- what do you mean ‘no way of knowing’?”

“It’s… ah, this is completely new, isn’t it?” He rested his forehead to Aran’s, sighing, “I’m sorry, my love. Come and rest, heal.” He pulled a silk rope, a series of bells singing sweetly in the mist. 

Aran touched his chest, “Just tell me what’s going on. Why-“

“I had asked for privacy, but I can-” A lanky man stepped through a stone archway on the other side of the pools. He was a shade darker than Dorian, shoulders not quite as broad, hair a mass of unruly auburn curls that framed his high cheekbones and equine nose. He was draped in a long, embroidered linen robe open over a wrapped loincloth. “My lord. Welcome home,” he smiled, a warm, knowing expression that seemed far too intimate for a stranger. “How may I serve?”

“Oils for the baths, I think, Rilienus: rosewater and prophet’s laurel, perhaps. And some fresh clothes for our escaped Dale.”

Rilienus bowed, all gliding, oiled, lean muscle, watching them. “Anything my lords desire.”

Aran stared as the man winked at him, slipping back out the archway. “What the actual Void-“

Dorian brushed ringed fingers over Aran’s shoulder, across his chest, “I am sorry. I always wondered what your first trip was like and now here it is and I’m not very well prepared. Let’s see if I can remember what you told me about it. You are in the Tevinter Imperium, my love.”

“What?!”

“It is currently 9:44 Dragon,” Dorian continued calmly, “And this world is not the one you know. Neither, I suspect, was the last you visited.”

“But Neriel-“

“-is not here, Amatus. Or rather, she does exist in this timeline, but she is not the same woman who you remember. She’s a _hahren_ , I believe is the term, some kind of lore keeper for her clan. No mark at all. I suppose I could send someone out to look and see what exactly she’s up to now, for curiosity’s sake, if you wish…”

“But-“

“When you return to her timeline, she will remember you. So long as it’s after she’s encountered you.” Dorian unwrapped the soiled leather from his hand, tossing it into a basket and smoothing his thumbs over Aran’s calloused, Fade-cracked palm. “For instance, you are here for the first time, and yet I know you very well.”

“9:44?” Aran felt dizzy, but Dorian was a firm source of familiarity. “A different- Maker, time! Damned bloody fucking Alexius- I’m an idiot-“

“No. You’re forgiving. It’s an admirable, if somewhat frustrating, trait.”

“How do you know me, if it’s not-“

“You’ve been here before, Aran. Many times. And, in many ways, you’ve made me the man I am today, a fact for which I am grateful. Never forget that.” He plucked the laces of his leathers apart, “Take the waters. You’ll like them. You always do.”

“Many times?” 

“Yes.”

“But this isn’t where- when- I came from?”

“No.”

“But you are Dorian- How can you be… you? If this isn’t… where did I- What about- you- the you I knew then- there- are you - he? - still there? Maker, this is mad.”

“It is an interesting development in time magic, to be sure. Gereon and I have made a study of it-“

“Gereon… _Alexius_? You’re… you’re working with him?”

Dorian touched Aran’s bared shoulders, steady and strong. “He is not the same man you knew. I know that you have suffered at his hands, but I promise you, he is a friend to us both. One of few that I trust.”

“You don’t understand, Dorian, the things he tried to do, the things he _did_ do-“

“-Did not happen here.”

“Void and dark, Dorian, he did this. Took me from you-“

“And gave you to me. But that was the man you knew in the time that you came from. Here, he was not recruited by the Venatori. In fact, they were routed nearly as soon as they began, thanks to your insight. The most Gereon has to do with the Inquisition in the south is the work he does with me, in this time and place, for you. Although they, also, are not what you recall.”

The stranger - Rilienus, Dorian had called him - returned with a basket laden with bottles and cloth. He measured out a small portion from each bottle into a golden bowl and stirred it carefully with his pinky, a decidedly sultry welcome in every look and gesture. He poured the oils from the bowl into the steaming pools baring his wrist in the pour, the line of his arm and shoulders like some kind of ancient Tevinter statue. 

Aran sighed as he felt Dorian’s bare chest warm and firm against his back, arms circling him, kissing his neck in a gentle river of affection. “So you’re not you,” he whispered.

“But I am me,” Dorian kissed the back of his ear. “I’m just not him.”

And what in the Void was _that_ supposed to mean? Dorian, but not Dorian? He felt like Dorian, looked like Dorian, had the same entrancing eyes and subtle smirk. He _tasted_ like Dorian. Kissed like Dorian. Held him the same. How could he not be him? “What about Corypheus?” Simpler. Something simpler.

“The remains of the so-called Elder God are split in ashes between a number of small boxes, safely stored away. He is a danger to no one.” 

Aran’s breath caught as he felt Dorian’s hips press against his lower back. “Dorian- not-Dorian… I don’t-”

“I have missed you, my Amatus. We all have.”

His heart was pounding against Dorian’s fingertips, breath catching. “All?”

“Stay and be at peace. You’re safe. You’re home.” 

Not home. Home was Dorian Pavus, the self-imposed exile, who trusted him, fought by his side, saw who he could be. Dorian, who he’d never even told he loved, who probably thought he’d… what? Fled? Died? Aran turned in that embrace and met those molten chocolate eyes, searching. Maker, he knew those eyes. Didn’t he? Hadn’t he spent months waiting to catch even the smallest glance from them? 

His answer came in the form of a kiss, languid and inviting, turning his muscles to liquid. He was full of questions, likely mad, but the Dorian he knew had never lied to him. Maybe this Dorian hadn’t either. Not home. Never home. But safe? Maybe. Maker, he prayed it was so, as he peeled his cuirass off, fresh and dried blood sticking the cracked leather to his flesh. He needed safety right now. He needed to figure out what was going on. What was real and what was not. 

A second pair of hands brushed his thigh, untying the knots of his greaves, and Aran’s breath hitched, glancing down at the top of Rilienus’s auburn curls. “Ah-“ he gasped as the man gently kissed the side of his knee, drawing it carefully to balance against him as he unlaced his boot, drawing it free and pulling the pant leg off over his foot. 

He swallowed, his heart pounding erratically, as Dorian licked his jawline, spreading his hands wide on his back and shoulders. Rilienus moved to his other leg, freeing him of boot and greave, kisses like cool droplets in the heat placed one by one up the back of his leg. “Ah- okay, hello. I don’t know you.”

“As you wish, my lord.” Rilienus laughed, sitting back on his heels to soak a cloth in warm water then offr it to them.

“He actually doesn’t,” Dorian murmured, taking the cloth, and began wiping the worst of the blood and dirt from Aran. 

“I can bathe myself-“

“But you don’t need to.”

“Seriously.” Aran fought a groan as Dorian pressed the warm cloth into the overworked muscles of his back. Focus. He studied the kneeling man. “Who are you? What’s- you’re not a slave or-“

“No slaves in this house,” Dorian assured him. “Rilienus is a Magister and a tailor, one of the best in Minrathous.”

“Your Grace is too kind,” the man demurred.

“A… tailor…. Magister…?” 

“You’re picturing blood magic rituals on robe linings, aren’t you?” Rilienus smirked. No. Smirk was too small a word. His lips curved, teasing and full and confident and- Nope. Not fantasizing about random hothouse strangers. “Needles dancing through fabric on their own?”

“No, I just… didn’t realize you had… jobs.”

“Everyone worth anything specializes in something,” he rested his hands, palms up, on his knees. Relaxed. Pleased with himself. Completely aware of how desirable he was.

Aran inhaled carefully. “So you… make clothes.”

“Yes.”

“With magic.”

“Sometimes.”

“And you’re not a- a servant or-“

Rilienus’s lips curled again - damn, there it was again. “On the contrary, we are all servants of the Archon.”

“Right, yes, of course, I knew that, but it’s-“ he felt a sudden dropping sensation as pieces fell into place. “Dorian?!”

“Yes.”

“How?!”

“Well, I am handsome, witty, charming, brilliant, and powerful; why shouldn’t I be Archon?”

“But you’re happy. You seem… happy. Safe. How? How are you happy here like this?”

Dorian’s expression softened, his thumbs caressing Aran’s face, “You.” He said it so simply that Aran was sure there was more to come. Something. Anything. 

No. It appeared that was it. Aran shook his head, “I don’t remember-“

“You don’t have to, Amatus. I remember for you. We all do. Our past is yet in your future. So… please don’t screw it up, if at all possible. We quite like the present.” He set the cloth aside and guided Aran forward into the baths.

Steaming hot water, sweet-scented, enveloped him. He could feel the prophet’s laurel and some sort of additional healing potion beginning to work on the myriad cuts, scratches, and bruises where the water touched. “Maker’s breath,” his eyes fell shut as he allowed the heat and healing to sink deep into his muscles.

“Phenomenal,” Rilienus whispered reverently. “It really is a new experience for you, isn’t it. I was a bit cracked when you tossed all of this at me out of nowhere.”

“You make a good point, sweet.” Dorian rested his cheek against the side of Aran’s head, cradling him against his side in the water, “Perhaps a bit too much, too quickly.”

Rilienus nodded, “Perhaps.”

“You’re… lovers?”

“It passes the time,” Rilienus smiled. “Thank you for that. Although, you don’t have to live with him when he’s pining. Still. The Empire is safer this way. Trust me.”

“We wouldn’t want to start another war with the qunari,” Dorian chuckled. 

“Andraste save us.” He brushed his fingers up Dorian’s calf, humor in every line of his face. Not pretty. Not exquisite like Dorian. But damn, if he wasn’t very, very nice to look at. “It was your idea, you know.”

Aran blinked, “What- mine?”

“Mmhmm.” There was that curl of the lip again, “You’re a real matchmaker for our Dorian. Me. Then Aelia and Feynriel.”

How many lovers had he procured for this man in lieu of himself? Why? Was it true? “You have a harem?” 

Dorian laughed, “Not yet, although I have learned to bow to your wisdom.” He nudged Aran’s nose with his own, “As you should bow to mine.” 

Aran slipped out of his arms, backing across the pool to submerge himself. Nope. The loincloth was not enough. Too many attractive Tevinter males in this bath. Too much Dorian all wet and slick. Not Dorian, not Dorian. But it was- Maker, it was. Just not his Dorian. Maker, how?! How was it possible? His heart was beating too fast. He poked his eyes out of the water to find the men staring at him. 

“Were you actually trying to… hide… under the water?” Rilienus asked. 

Aran laughed, nervously, “Who, me? No. Hide? No.” He cleared his throat. “I would like to go now.”

“Where?”

“Skyhold.”

“Is that the mountain fortress he talks about?” Rilienus glanced at Dorian, who nodded.

“I have to get back to Dorian.” Aran winced, “My Dorian. The- this is so confusing. I’m sorry. You- Maker, you’re so like him, but he’s-”

Dorian- the Archon- nodded gently. “I understand, Amatus, but he’s not here.”

Aran swallowed, trying to will himself out of- Maker, he could feel tears welling behind his eyes. Too much. This was all too much. Grow up, you idiot. He shut his eyes. What would Dorian tell you to do right now, if he were here?

“Would you like to see the register?”

Aran blinked, hope soaring. “Register? Logs? Notes?”

“Yes, of every time you’ve been here and what you’ve told us about your time in between.”

Aran shuddered out an exhale. “Research,” he whispered it like a prayer.

The Archon smiled. 

“Yes. Please. Research.”


	3. i can't ask if i

There was… so much. Not just notes on arrivals and departures, but the events preempting both, injuries sustained, remedies provided. Neriel’s name came up a number of times - so she was safe. That helped him breathe easier. Other names - Grimna, Cadash, Bahanem, Hawke… Varric’s Hawke? He startled when a tray was placed on the desk next to him. A decanter, glasses, and a bowl.

“Peeled grapes. You actually do eat peeled grapes.” Aran scrubbed his hands over his face, rousing himself from his stunned stupor. His eyes ached from reading. He had no idea how long he’d been at it. “I thought that was a joke.”

Dorian lifted his brows as he poured, “I would never jest about peeled grapes.”

“So you… know me. These logs go back years. And this… some of this is my handwriting.”

“Mm,” Dorian - the Archon - settled into a chair to the side of the desk, sipping his wine. “I’m sorry.” 

Aran felt something tighten in his chest. “So I haven’t-”

“You haven’t seen him. To our knowledge, you haven’t returned to the point of your departure. That doesn’t mean you won’t, Aran. Only that you either haven’t told us or you haven’t yet. There is always hope.”

“How- how long?”

Dorian steepled his fingers above the lip of the glass, studying the red wine, “Since you began your journey to the latest logs I have? According to my calculations… about seven years.” 

Aran pressed his palm to his chest. Maker, he couldn’t- seven years? Years? He could feel a rhythmic thumping in his ears. No. “Only a few months- Four, at the most. Not-”

“So far.”

“Maker.” Aran swallowed, staggering to his feet. White marble. Gold inlays. Plush carpets. It couldn’t be real. This was… something… not real. The Fade. Demons. Not real. Not- “No.” Seven years? No. He had to go back. Now. Missing one year, a demon army had overtaken Ferelden and Corypheus had taken the Black City. Seven?!

He ran. He had no idea where he was going. Every hallway looked the same, but for the slight changes in the colors of the tapestries. A maze. A trick of the mind. He wished he knew more about magic. He was shaking, barefoot and running. They’d given him a robe, lustrous grey cotton lined with silk. It whispered around him, brushing against his skin like fingertips. Fuck. No. None of this was real.

“Aran?” A woman with a pile of raven black hair atop her head stepped out of one of the innumerable, endless repetitive doors. “What’s happened?”

“Keep back.” Aran spun, backing away from her. She was dressed in Magister’s robes, black and white, with the intricately embroidered stole that marked her as a member of the Magisterium. Her eyes were nearly as dark as Dorian’s - bright, intelligent, suddenly wary. The stark colors brought attention to the warmth of her skin, the darkness of her eyes and hair. 

“What’s the matter?” She reached out to him with a long, slender hand. “Aran, talk to me- has he done something again? Did something happen with Halward?”

“Don’t-” He stared at her, “What- Halward?”

She frowned. “Did he return from exile? I told you both that he should have died. At the very least, he should have gone to the Gauntlet. We should have made an example of him from the start, but did you listen? What has he done?”

“I don’t- Exiled?” How could Halward be exiled from the Imperium? Then again, how could Dorian be the Archon? “Who- who am I? Who do you think I am?”

“You’re… Aran, are you feeling alright? Did you just come through? I know the trips can be disorienting. You’re safe. We’re right here with you.”

“No,” he backed away from her. “Just tell me. Who am I?”

She rested her hands at her hips, peering at him, “Is this a trick question?”

“How would it be a trick question?” Aran asked, exasperated. “How many answers could there possibly be?”

“The Crow, the Marcher assassin,” she was counting off her fingers, “the Ferelden apostate, the Archon’s consort, the Dalish ambassador, the-”

“Consort?” he pressed his fingers to his temples. “No. No, and apostate? I’m not a mage. I’m not-”

“You are the Archon’s consort, Aran. I should know. He’s my husband.” Sick. He was going to be sick. Cool, slender hands rested on his forehead gently. “You’re warm.” She touched him under the ear, humming quietly. He felt her magic like distant, ephemeral touches inside of him. “Not poisoned, though. Let’s get you to bed.”

“Poison?”

“No worries. You’re clean, but for a mild respiratory infection- I’m glad you finally found someone to see to those scars, by the way. You’re lovely.” She tugged his earlobe playfully, “Can’t say I care for the hair color, though, darling. You were so unique before. Never mind- we’ll figure something out.” She wrapped an arm around his shoulders. 

“Husband?”

She hugged him. Hugged him. Sweet as ripe oranges. “You really are addled this time, aren’t you?”

“Air- I need air. I need to get out of here.”

“If you need air, let’s go to the terrace. We can take a pipe. You look like you could use one.” She was all angles and length, high cheekbones that could cut glass. “Did you receive a head wound? Where are you coming from?”

“Yes- yes!” He gasped, laughing suddenly. That was it! That explained it! “Yes. Back of the head. A shield, I think. Ah, thank the Maker. I’m just dying.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. You’re up and about. Talking. Running.” She stopped, tilting his head to peer into his eyes. “Dilation is a bit much for my liking, but that could be shock or pain. You’re always a bit blown out. You-” Always? He felt himself sway. Consort? Assassin? She huffed, a little frustrated tightness between her brows as she studied him. “Your eyes… You do not know who I am.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying.”

She patted his cheek, “Yes. You definitely need a pipe. He’s seen you then. You smell like the baths. You wouldn’t have found those on your own.” She linked her arm with his, companionably, and resumed walking. “I’m Aelia.”

“Aran.”

“Yes, I’m aware,” she chuckled. “Ah, poor dear, come along, now. Welcome to Minrathous.” She pushed open a pair of doors… and Aran stumbled out. A wide, white marble terrace and beyond it… spiked towers covered every inch of the island and beyond that… sea. Endless sea. He sank to his knees. Too much. 

“It is real,” she knelt beside him, resting her hand over his. “All of it. Quite the shock, I imagine.”

Footsteps slapped down the hallway towards them then Dorian emerged in the doorway, “Thank the Maker. You found him.”

“No thanks to you.” She sniffed, “Can’t you see he’s terrified?”

“I was dealing with that,” Dorian insisted. 

“How?” she asked. “By letting him wander Minrathous alone?”

“Seven years,” Aran whispered. 

“Maker’s tears, Dorian, you told him? Did you show him the register? What would have possessed you?”

“It always helps him get a sense of where he is- to regain his balance, you know that-“

“Not the first time,” Aelia curled her arm around Aran’s shoulders protectively. “Remember how you felt when he explained all this to you.”

“ _Fasta vass_.” Aran saw his slippered feet first, then the hem of his robe, cloth folding as Dorian knelt in front of him, gently taking his free hand. Aran stared at his hand. Smooth. Soft. None of Dorian’s staff callouses. Just velvet skin with ink stains on his fingertips. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, Amatus. It seemed to be helping.”

Aran exhaled shakily. Maker. Seven years. Dorian, but not Dorian. Archon. With a wife. A wife that was cradling him like an old friend who needed tending.

“Fetch my pipe, would you?” she was asking. “It will help with the shock. And some food. Real food, not frippery. Where did he come from?”

“Traveling with the Dalish. Somewhere sandy.”

“Have the cooks prepare something light, then. Too much heavy sauce and he’ll likely be sick from it. We need to ease him into this.” She sighed over Aran’s head, “Don’t look so worried, my liege.” There was an amused lightness to her voice, as though the act of planning and setting tasks eased her. “He turns out just fine. Right now, we have to do our best to prepare him for what’s to come, just as he has done for us. If what you and Gereon believe is true, then short of having him stumble off a balcony, he’ll find his way ahead to the way things have been. Time smoothing the edges, isn’t that it?” 

Aran tightened his hold as Dorian began to pull away.

“I’m stuck,” he murmured gently. Pleased. Pleased to be tugged closer. 

Aran dragged his gaze up the dark blue drying robe Dorian had donned after the baths, the peek of smooth, caramel muscles where it gaped open. The just barely visible edge of one dark nipple, hidden by the line of cloth. He pressed his mouth to that skin, eliciting a guttural sigh - such a Dorian sigh of pleasure - as his tongue flicked out to brush that hidden, tight nub. Dorian thumbs stroking his hair. Dorian scent filling his mouth and nose. What am I doing? Aran let go with a shock, ducking his head before he could do any more damage. Maker, his wife was right bloody there. “I’m- addled. That’s not- Aelia, I’m so sorry-“

She kissed the side of his head. “Don’t be, darling. And don’t stop on my account; we all need to find our comforts where we may.” She chuckled against him, laughter fluffing his hair. “I’ll gather the food and pipe fillers myself. Follow your heart, my friend,” she kissed his temple. “It always seems to take you to the right place.” She stood, brushing a hand over his robes, creases disappearing as her hand passed them. “Do you want to stay out here, Aran? The city can be beautiful when the fires fill it. A bit less confining.”

Aran stared up at her, “You’re just… fine… with all of this? But you’re-“

“It’s a marriage of convenience, darling. One you arranged, as a matter of fact. Rather difficult to be jealous when we’re both so awfully fond of men.” She touched his cheek lightly. “You should stay here. See our city for the wonder She is. Dorian, be a gentleman, and bring him some cushions.”

They watched her go, shutting the mirror-paned terrace doors behind her. Aran stared, stunned, into the reflection. The two of them kneeling on the marble terrace with the flickering mage fires of Minrathous crackling to life throughout the city’s towers behind them as the night overtook the day. 

“I’m so used to you being the strong one,” Dorian murmured. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“You didn’t- not you. Just… this.” He studied Dorian’s profile in the mirror, watched him watching. “When- she said that I’m your…”

“Consort.”

“And that means… what, exactly?”

“That if any citizen of the Imperium lays a finger of power on you, they die.” Dorian frowned, “But only for the last four years. So… when you’re here before 9:40, please be careful.”

“Right.” Aran cleared his throat, “Right, because I have been. Many times.”

“Yes.”

“Only not yet.”

“Yes.” Gentle fingers pressed into the tension in his shoulders, finding and unwinding knots one by one. “She’s right, you know. You need time to adjust. We can talk about it later.”

“Later.” Aran swallowed, “Is that all it means? Protection?”

“What do you want me to say, Amatus?”

“I want you to tell me that I’m dreaming. That this isn’t real. That- Void and dark, that you’re Dorian, my Dorian, and we’re in another of these damned time traps and you’re going to get us out of it.”

“I will get you out of it.” He said it so fiercely that Aran believed him, maybe because of the gravitas that settled in the words. “I will figure it out and send you back. You have my word.” 

Aran leaned back into his hands. “I believe you.”

“And I am your Dorian. More than you could ever know. You and I, my love, are twinned like phoenix feathers.” His thumbs rolled circles at the base of Aran’s neck. “Even after I’ve sent you back home, back to him, I’ll still be yours.” He kissed the top of Aran’s head gently. “All this, I promise you.”


	4. meet me in the shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aran is learning the rules of blending into the Tevinter Imperium, but a wrong turn and a stumble through time lead him to unexpected consequences. (9:34 Dragon)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explicit m/m towards the end of the chapter.

He felt sick, fluttery, like there was wind under his skin being buffeted by strengthening winds. Nerves. It was nerves. He’d never liked balls or galas. He still wasn’t used to being the center of attention for a crowd. And now he had to combine the two? “It felt fine, but you can’t actually expect-” He tripped, feeling dizzy. “-me to wear that in public, can you?” he glanced over his shoulder. “Ril?” Damn, he’d lost him. Stupid crowded Minrathous. There should be a law about how many people are allowed to exist on an island at the same time. There simply wasn’t room, even before you added in all the robes and staves.

What had Dorian said the tavern was called? The Bitter… something. Symbol? Crystal? Why hadn’t he paid more attention?

Lips curling in a smile, eyes rolling just behind Dorian’s ear, waggling his brows all suggestively. Aran smirked, shaking his head. Distracting. Rilienus was funny and charming and distracting... and now Aran was lost in bloody Minrathous.

Cardinal? Bitter Cardinal?

He crossed his wrists at the back of his waist, lifting his chin. Might as well practice all those carefully taught behaviors before he was thrust in the spotlight at the palace. No expression, not even in the eyes, just relax and take up all the space you can without looking like you’re trying to- As if that were easy.

The Bitter Cymbal. That was it.

He twisted past a pair of robed women before he remembered he was supposed to make them walk around him. Maybe he’d just make sure he found somewhere to sit at the stupid ball. He could sit right, at least. Couldn’t he? Straight-back. Imagine you’re sitting on something uncomfortable, but it’s worth it. Oh, he knew that feeling. He pushed the tavern’s door open and stepped inside.

The tavern was gleaming, shadows playing on the walls heedless of the flickering movement of the magefires. Dark, warm, and inviting. No wonder Dorian liked the place.

And there he was.

Aran smiled despite himself, slipping through the men and women arguing and laughing over drinks in every spare inch of the place. “Hey! Thought I was lost for a second there-” he caught sight of Dorian’s companion at the table and beamed. “Felix! Maker, are you a sight for sore eyes. Can’t believe they let you out; can I buy you a drink? I’m flush, apparently.”

They peered at him, all cool expressions and caustic lifted brows. 

Aran bit his lip. Right. Vacant and empty-headed on the outside. Calculating and manipulative on the inside. He wasn’t good at any of those things, outside or inside. But Dorian liked the game, he enjoyed it, enjoyed being better than most at it. He could do this. He closed rifts. He killed demons. He could pretend to belong in Tevinter. He closed his eyes, focusing on his breathing, and carefully imagined all the blood and sense leaving his body like color seeping out of fabric. He’d been spending too much time with Rilienus. Careful about the accent. Sound by sound, not word by word. When he opened his eyes again, they were still eyeing him. Curious. Expectant. Like he was about to spout poetry or dance on the table.

He was not about to do either of those things.

Dorian tilted his head, barely, the line of his throat catching the meandering light of the fires just so. Too beautiful for words. His lips curved just a touch. “Drinks, I believe, were mentioned?”

“White Shear, yes?”

Dorian smiled, “Oh, I do like a fellow with a prodigious memory. Run along, then.”

"Mind your sickness, my friend."

"Mind your own."

Aran quirked a brow at that, barely stopping himself from rolling his eyes, as he walked back to the bar and gave the order. Practice. They’d said they would go somewhere public to practice his technique. Somewhere he could observe variations of the niceties they were teaching him as he put them into practice. But this felt like more of a test than anything. Wasn’t he supposed to be practicing power plays, not just the casual expected behaviors? Regardless, it was good to see Felix out and about again. He’d been so pale before. The potions Aelia had been sending him must have been doing the trick, finally.

He returned to the table with three glasses and a bottle, lifting brows when they said nothing. “You’re welcome?” Aran fought the urge to cross his arms.

“Thanks, yes, thank you. Shall we?” Felix took his glass and held it up, “Let us drink and live among the good!”

“Or the terrible,” Dorian murmured with a low chuckle.

“ _Gauda_!” Aran intoned as somberly as he could muster.

The glasses sang like bells as they landed one after another on the warm wooden table.

“Well, thank you, as my friend said, but we-” Dorian flicked his wrist, tossing the sleeve of his robe just enough to bare his forearm for an instant. “-were discussing Godian’s theory of ambient magic.”

“What about it?”

“What about it, he asks,” Dorian chuckled. “So you’ve read it then.”

“The second edition.” Aran lifted his brows. What was so funny?

“Oh, the second, I see-” Dorian brushed his thumb idly around the rim of his glass. “And what did you think, pray tell?”

“Just… generally?” Oh, it _was_ a test. Drawing room conversation. Deportment classes all over again. “It seemed perfectly reasonable. With what we know about the means by which energy is drawn across the Veil, it seems that there does have to be some mode of conveyance - not simply will, but something upon which that will can manifest. I mean, if we accept the proof that mages are more susceptible to the invasion of spirits than non-mages - sorry, _soporati_ \- we have to accept that there has to be a reason that is not related to will, but instead related to the correspondence between power and access to the Face which results in a constant flow occurring even when energy is not being directly drawn for a purpose. And since the theory behind Tranquility is the repeated collision of two points of power from either side of the Veil, resulting in the combustion and mutual annihilation of all those sympathetic connections, that seems - again - to be in keeping with that mode of conveyance. How can you have sympathetic connections without a means by which those powers connect? But it’s hard to measure the absence of something and since casting is largely accomplished by force of will, that means that some aspect of psychology is inherent in the manifestation of that will, meaning that one could, conceivably, alter the means by which one expects to perceive a stated effect, allowing them to witness the underlying pattern that allows that manifestation.” He frowned, “It would take an awful lot of lyrium to prove it though, I’m assuming. Potentially too much for any one person. Which would mean a circle casting, but getting that many people to be resolutely in agreement about a singular perception would be- what? What’s the matter?” He noticed they were staring at him. Had his accent come back? Had he committed some atrocious faux-pas? He knew he was supposed to look like a vacant doll, but he wasn’t supposed to sound like one. Maybe he’d forgotten about his facial expression at some point?

"Look at that," Dorian exhaled. His eyes alight, leaning in. "It has a mind in it." 

“Who do you study with?” Felix asked, leaning forward with a fascinated gleam. “It’s not Plutas, is it?”

“What?”

“How did you even get your hands on the theorem, let alone- I couldn’t have broken it down that tidily. Do you mind if I steal what you just said?”

“Go ahead?” Aran laughed. “You just have to read it. He lays it out fairly clearly.”

“Who is it? Rosilien? Modun?”

“What?”

“Your mentor, man, your mentor-”

“I don’t have-”

“Oh, right. That- I lost my head for a moment there. Of course, you don’t. Nevertheless- you haven’t read any of Aserethan’s works, have you?”

“‘The Shape and Nature of the Fade’ and…. Oh, the- ah, Void and blast, it’s on the tip of my tongue.”

“‘The Resilience of Echoes’,” Dorian murmured.

“Yes,” Aran snapped his fingers, relieved, and brushed his fingers over Dorian’s shoulder, ducking his head, “-yes. ‘The Resilience of Echoes’. What an awful title. I can’t believe I could let that one slip.” He felt a slight pressure at his right thigh, the weight of Dorian’s knee gently knocking against him. Good. He’d pulled it off, then. He met Dorian’s glance with a bow of his head, grinning behind his hand. He’d won. “Thanks.”

“Well.” Dorian clapped Felix on the shoulder. "The wine is yours, my friend. Move."

“No-” Felix sighed, “Dorian. You’re forgetting we’re meeting my father in a half-hour.”

“I’m not forgetting anything.”

Felix shook his head, standing to allow Dorian to leave the table. “Don’t be late. I’m not going to make excuses for you.”

“And I wouldn’t ask you to.” He swept past Aran in a flurry of whispering cotton. "One's nature calls."

The actual- Was he just going to leave without a word? He stood. More tests? And why the hell would we start this conversation if we weren’t going to finish it? Dorian, of all people, knew how frustrated Aran became when he was intellectually blue-balled.

“I am stealing it,” Felix said as he sat back down and poured another glass. “And this.”

Aran nodded, distracted, “As you wish,” and turned to see Dorian turning down a hall out of the main room. “Damn it,” he muttered under his breath, slipping through clusters of people to catch up to him. He found Dorian standing beside a door, idly eyeing the shadowed ceiling.

“Good. You're here. If you’d be so kind,” he nudged the door next to him open and gestured Aran in ahead of him.

“Fine, but-” Aran huffed, walking into- dark. He knocked his shin on a plank of wood a moment before the brazier in the corner burst into flame then shuddered to low banked embers, outlining the room in the barest mist of light. Shelves lined the walls of the small room, stacked with plates, mugs, candlesticks- “Dorian-” His breath caught in his throat as Dorian pushed him against the wall, mouth hot on the back of his neck. He could feel the line of him, heat pressed against his back, his phallus rigid against the curve of his ass. 

“Keep quiet,” Dorian whispered, licking the back of his ear.

Weeks of careful, fumbling touches, stumbling towards intimacy. Void, even watching him with Rilienus, he’d been all gentle leaf-dropping tenderness. This… was not that. Aran’s cheek shoved against the wood-paneled wall, Dorian dragging his hands over his body with rough strokes and Aran was hard in an instant, thoughts flying out of his head like the froth of waves. He shuddered, twisting to catch Dorian’s lips with his own, kissing him long and hard as Dorian grabbed hold of his hair tight, licking deeper into his mouth, sucking his tongue hard. He pressed Aran back against the wall, grinding their hips together, and Aran groaned at the feeling of Dorian’s trapped erection pressing against his own. He moaned lower as Dorian’s hand clasped over his mouth, fingers pressing his tongue down.

“Quiet,” he hissed, kissing the side of his mouth hard.

Then Aran was on his knees, shoved down roughly, the fingers in his mouth dragging his jaw open for Dorian’s twitching cock. Aran barely had time to breathe as Dorian shoved past his lips, fingers tangling tightly in his hair. And shit, shit, it was hot, hard, thrusting into his tongue and the roof of his mouth, dripping precum. Dorian’s ragged, hushed breaths above him in the dark as he angled Aran’s head to suit him, thrusting deeper, choking Aran on his cock as his balls slapped his chin. Aran’s eyes watered as he gasped for even the tiniest sips of breath through his nose.

“Fuck- fuck-” Dorian grasped the back of his head with bruising fingers, fucking his face as Aran gagged around him, wet-cheeked and wide-eyed.

He couldn’t even try to do… anything. His tongue was trapped, jaw-forced wide, and the hold Dorian had on his head was- tight, demanding. Then nearly as soon as it had begun, Dorian jerked free of him. Aran coughed, swaying forward as he dragged in a breath. His lips felt bruised, the back of his throat sore. He blinked hard, trying to clear his eyes, but found himself summarily shoved to the floor. They needed to talk about this. Talk through it. Not that this wasn’t… fucking exhilarating, but they’d agreed to take things slow and this wasn’t slow. This was faster than anything. Rough and hushed. “Need to-”

“Shut up,” Dorian gasped, “You need to shut up.”

Aran moaned as Dorian’s hand closed over his mouth again, fingers pressing in where his cock had just pounded. Aran felt his robes dragged up over his hips, felt the tight squeeze of Dorian’s palm against his ass as his smallclothes were shoved down. Then- ah- that slippery, swollen head pressed against him, rubbing between his cheeks, pressing, pressing. “Oil-” he whispered around Dorian’s fingers.

“No time, I’m afraid-” Then the head of Dorian’s cock was inside of him, too big, too suddenly. It popped out of him, then shoved in a little deeper as Dorian gave a muffled groan of relief against the back of his neck. “So tight-” he raked his teeth against the back of Aran’s scalp, rocking his hips back and thrusting deeper, deeper.

And it hurt, _hurt_ , but it was good, too. Frenzied and fumbling, fucking him harder and harder, Dorian’s cock in his ass, Dorian’s fingers in his mouth. Maker, but he'd missed this hungry dance.

“Suck-” the heated demand against his ear.

Aran did, licking and sucking Dorian’s fingers as they fucked his mouth. It helped, muffling his moans, making him focus on something other than the pain so he could relax, open, accept the perfect full rightness of that firm, thick cock pounding him. Dorian was so hard, so very, very hard, grunting as he thrust deeper, more, fuller, deeper. Aran felt the shudder roll through him the moment before he came, felt the hot seed pour into him as he pounded his way through his climax. More. More.

Aran gasped as Dorian’s fingers slipped, slick, from his lips. A gentle pat on the side of his head. “Good. Ah, good,” he breathed, then chuckled when Aran swayed, moaning piteously, as he pulled free of his ass. “Find me another day,” he whispered against his back, pressing a hot kiss to the middle of his spine.

“Dorian-”

“Ah,” Dorian’s fingers at his ass, pressing, coming away slick with his cum. He rubbed his fingers to that raw, well-fucked hole as Aran hissed, sore but nonetheless wanton. “Time and oil. We can try again if you’d like.”

If I’d like? Aran looked back over his shoulder, still trying to catch his breath, his own cock thick and heavy, bobbing against his stomach. Dorian was licking his fingers in the shadows, straightening his robes.

“Do you need a hand?”

Aran blinked at him. “What?”

“Uncouth, I know, but I really do have to run. Here.”

Aran stumbled as Dorian helped him to his feet. He felt the cool press of metal against his palm.

“For your trouble.” Dorian kissed him hard. “Do find me again, if you've got the time.” The door opened and shut.

Aran leaned against the wall, ass afire, so hard he couldn’t think, feeling the slick drip of Dorian’s pleasure down the back of his thigh. In the dark, as the embers bowed out, he felt the outline of two heavy coins in his hand.

It wasn’t… it didn’t… make any sense. None of it. Unless- “Oh- oh, fuck-” He touched the coins to his lips as he swallowed a sob. Different. Maker. A different Minrathous? A different Dorian. He ached, biting the gold coins. ‘For your trouble,’ he’d said. Two royals weren’t nearly enough for his troubles.

“I am so very far from home,” he whispered in the dark.


	5. you knew all along

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Realizing that he's no longer in the Imperium he knew, Aran tries to figure out his next steps. And stumbles deeper down the rabbit hole. (9:34 Dragon)

Little wonder they’d given him the strange looks that they had. They didn’t know him. Of course, they didn't. Asking who his mentor was? Not part of some elaborate test, but true curiosity. How had he not seen it before? How?

Aran carefully made his way out of the tavern. Sit. He needed to sit somewhere quiet. Alone. And find a way to not sputter and stutter like a madman. Maker knew he felt like one.

The afternoon was hot, baking, but he shivered despite it.

Dorian.

He felt as though his heart might willfully tumble free of his chest and shatter on the smooth marble street. Walking hurt. He could still taste the other man in his mouth, could still feel the residual echoes of his grasp on his skin.

No time, he said? Too bloody much time all bending on itself.

Maker, Dorian-

His throat was raw, not only from usage, and he slipped into a side street to breathe the shuddering tears away. Back. Away. He had to figure out which world he was inhabiting. And when. What was happening.

It hadn’t occurred to him. Dorian had been asking about Ostwick, about his own experiences with men and women- and it hadn’t occurred to him that Dorian’s could be so different. His father, maybe, but his whole world? And yet he’d done the same thing to him, hadn’t he? For weeks: tugging Dorian into storerooms and hallways for fumbles and tumbles. Lust and hurried hunger. Never quite so hurried, not like that, not on purpose, but- ah Maker, he hadn’t thought of what Dorian might take from it-

Empty. Maker, he felt empty. Raw and used.

The coins were still gripped in his palm, tight, white-strained knuckles locked around them.

For your trouble.

Oh, Dorian-

He pressed his back to the wall, tilting his head back to eye the sky above. No blisters here. No Fadeshroud over the clouds. Just endless sun.

What was he supposed to do now? Dorian wouldn’t take his story seriously. To him, at best, Aran was a horny Laetan, some Circle mage he’d probably bagged before when he was drunk. At worst, he was all of the above, but looking to use or blackmail Dorian for some way up the complicated social ladders of the city. Either way-

He sighed heavily.

At least he was in Minrathous. He’d seen maps. He knew the language. He had a robe and coin and enough theoretical understanding of the Fade to be able to pass so long as no one asked him to actually cast anything. His broken heart would probably help him fit in if his recent experience was anything to go by. So there was that.

When, though. That was the trick. Did the Chantry here keep records the same way the ones in the south did? Could he figure things out that way?

He could find Rilienus here, that might help. He had said that Aran had found him on his own, guided him to Dorian. Of course, he’d mentioned some kind of note and Aran didn’t have… anything except his coin purse and the clothes on his back. So maybe this wasn’t the time for that. Or it was, and he’d gone and wrecked it somehow.

He stared up at the gleaming white tower of the Imperial Archon. Somewhere to sleep. Healing potions, if he could find them without being too suspicious. The where and when. A list. He needed a bloody list.

He grumbled, pushing from the wall, and headed back to the main street. He’d find an inn somewhere. He’d- the sudden weightlessness at his belt had him spinning to see the back of a man’s back sprinting away from him. Aran snarled, taking off after him. Stupid, stupid, stupid, his mind shouted as he followed the runner, dodging around corners and over barrels. He was damned if he was going to try to survive in Minrathous without coin. He ducked around a low wall and threw himself at the young man, pinning him to the ground and throwing a hard left into his cheek. “Give it back.”

“Get the fuck off- shit-”

“Now.” The rogue writhed, throwing a handful of dust into his face that made Aran’s nose itch. Aran punched him in the forearm then pinned his arms to the ground.

The rogue stared at him, “You’re no mage.”

“And you’re no gentleman. Give me my purse.” Aran gritted his teeth, throwing his weight onto the other man heavily, patting his pockets and pouches down in search of the purse.

“I won’t-”

“Give it to me, you daft shit. I’m having a really, really bad day.” He didn’t notice the guards. He would never be sure if the other man did. “Just give it to me and you can be on your way. I swear.”

“Get off of me, freak. Get off-”

Aran yelped as he was lifted bodily into the air, his arms jerked behind himself and bound into metal brackets. “Get your hands off of me-”

“It’ll be easier if you don’t resist. You are both under arrest for Offenses Against the Person-”

“The Void, you say, he stole my-”

“Take it up with the magistrate.” The guard sounded bored. Not a guard. A Templar, armor and all, though he seemed to give the same treatment to Aran as he did the rogue.

“Whose person am I supposed to have offended- my thief’s?”

“Shut up,” the rogue spat. “I told him I wanted nothing to do with it, but you saw, didn’t you- forcing himself on me like a madman, he was-”

“Forcing you into what?” Aran snarled.

“You southerners- coming here and joining one of our Circles- none of your abilities change the fact that you’re a savage, same as the rest. Just shut your mouth.”

“Sava-” He tasted blood as the fist that cracked against his face split his lip, then a chain bound in silk was snapped between his teeth. Then the hood was tugged over his head.

He stumbled in darkness down two… three streets? Before he was loaded into what felt like a wagon. The bindings, he was fairly certain, were meant to keep him from casting, but they also kept him from finding any way to pick the lock.

“Should have just let me be.” He heard the rogue mutter nearby. “They’ll hang you for buggery, you piece of shit. Whatever you are.”

Asshole, Aran thought viciously. How the fuck was he supposed to get out of this? They were going to figure out he wasn’t a mage, Circle or no, very soon. He had no one to take his side. And - buggery? Maker, they didn’t really think he’d been trying to- The only people he did know who were in this city would likely be implicated by a charge like that more than they could help him. If they wanted to. Which- why would they? They didn’t know him, didn’t owe him anything. No one did.

What was the sentence, he wondered. It couldn’t actually be hanging. That was insane. Would he lose a hand, like a thief? Would they see the mark before or after they cut? What would they make of it?

The hood didn’t come off until he was in a cell.

“Don’t leave me in here with him! I’m in danger! I’m-”

“Shut up,” a metal gauntlet clanged against the cell’s bars as the door slammed shut and locked.

Aran sneered at him around the metal gag, his arms still bound. Whatever they’re going to do to me, he thought, they’re going to do to you, too, you moron. At least you can move. Talk. He dropped to his knees on the straw-littered floor. Think. He had to think. Find a way out of this. There had to be a way. After all, Dorian knew him. And Rilienus and Aelia. They knew him, which meant he made it back, at least to them, didn’t it? Unless he didn’t.

He had to. He had to. It was the only way home.

 

* * *

 

In the end, it wasn’t hanging.

The word of the Templar had been enough to convict him of public fornication and buggery. Which meant, in Aran’s mind, that the Templars here were no more worldly than those he’d grown up with. These were in the pockets of mages instead of their enemies, perhaps, but they still didn’t know what sex looked like. Little wonder they were all so irritable.

“Offenses against the Person.” He was guilty under their law, that much was true. Even though it hadn’t been that for which he’d been caught. Maybe the rogue was right, he thought. Maybe I should have just let him have the coin.

Interestingly, it didn’t seem to matter at that point whether he was a mage or not. Or who he was. Who he had been. Maybe if he’d had a name or a connection to use, it might have made a difference. But he hadn’t. And now, according to the Imperium, he had no name. None at all. His right to it had been stripped by order of the magistrate of Minrathous. It didn’t matter who he had been.

Slavery. That was his punishment. A collar of bondage or Tranquility, but either way he was to be subjected to another’s will for the rest of his life. Too damned late, he wanted to laugh. To scream. He took the collar. He wasn’t sure what the Rite of Tranquility would do to him, given that he wasn’t a mage, but he had enough magic theory in his head to make him nervous about what it could accomplish. Especially given the anchor.

Would the collar’s magic hold, he wondered, whether he fell through to next? Think of it as an experiment. Stay calm and think about the theory. The collar was deep bronze, laden with red stones, but there was nothing pretty about it. The gems - whatever they were - had a dull, grotesque glow to them. Not red lyrium, he knew that much, but they felt similar. Dirty. Thick. The moment it fastened around his neck, he felt ill. His stomach turned, bile burning the back of his throat, but he couldn’t throw up.

He’d thought, perhaps, they’d keep him in the city. Make him do hard labor. But apparently, the magistrate had other arrangements. He learned this when he was loaded into a wagon and driven across the endless bridge from Minrathous. He and a few others. Mostly mages, some not. The mages were easy to spot- all of them still in the gleaming arm shackles, their mouths gagged. All except the Tranquil two, who sat quietly along the side. There were seven in all. The rogue who’d taken his coin and landed him in this fucking hell was nowhere to be seen.

He watched the scenery as it passed. Drank the water when it was poured past his gag. Waited to be pulled through, tossed across time and space; a time-broken weaver’s shuttle. But whatever magic it was that dragged him about like a nervous pony on a lead, it didn’t save him.

The property he was taken to was well-manicured and clean and smelled of… some kind of citrus he didn’t recognize. Sweeter than lemons. Brighter than oranges. The trees were low and glossy green. Pleasant enough, really. He didn’t see any corpses hanging from trees. He chose to take that as a good sign.

They were unloaded before the wide marbled front step of a crisp, clean manor - lined up like dolls and made to kneel. The collars worked strangely, sending pulses through his body to force the movement. He’d thought it might control his will, but that wasn’t it. It just made it… physically impossible to not do what he was told. Dangerous with a mage, he thought. No wonder they’d kept them all shackled and gagged. One man or woman finding a loophole in the physical boundaries that had been set would create havoc. What exactly did one do with a collection of imprisoned, enslaved mages who were likely to go off at any moment?

He frowned. That’s what the southern Circles were, though, wasn’t it? Not all of the mages, but… Maker, how many were there by choice versus fear? Had anyone ever bothered to take a census on the subject?

One by one, they were guided from the line, taken into a small stone building to the side of the main entrance. When it was Aran’s turn, his legs pressed up before he could think to move, his head down. He walked without a leader into the building and sat on the small wooden stool in the center of the bare room. And waited.


	6. then i should die before i wake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aran finds himself in the hands Magister Danarius, who seeks to take advantage of the anchor and its host.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : non-consensual drugs, physical/sexual abuse. If these things trigger you, skip ahead.

The room was too warm, the heat from outside stiff and stifling within the four unmarked walls. The stool was sticky against the back of his loincloth, the scent of baked copper strong in the air. He could have looked down, but he was fairly certain he didn’t need to see it to know it was blood. Not a stool, he thought, feeling the edge pressing into the backs of his thighs. A chopping block. He heard the door behind him open and close, the _whush_ of cloth against stone, the rake and rattle of a chair being moved. A moment later, the gag was released from his mouth, falling to the side.

“Name.”

He hesitated and a sharp, fiery pain snapped through his chest from his neck. “Quicksilver. People call me Quicksilver.” One person did. The pain stopped.

“You’re a long way from home, Free Marcher.”

“You have no idea.” Aran could have bitten his tongue. Don’t smart off to the slaver. Idiot.

The voice behind him was dry leaves and mountain winds. “Let’s begin again. Name.”

“Aran.” What did it matter? No one knew him.

“You will breathe calmly. Your heart will continue to beat. Everything else will stop.”

Aran would have screamed, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t draw enough air. His breath remained a steady rhythm as every muscle in his body atrophied at once. He felt the shackles release from his arms, pins and needles. He’d been in them since he’d first been taken - nearly a week now. His eyes watered with the agony of stillness.

“Why the moniker? ‘Quicksilver’? Do you have some sympathetic elemental connection?”

“No.”

“Why then?”

Aran tried to turn his eyes, to peer peripherally towards the voice, but the more he tried, the tighter the muscles around those orbs felt. Squeezing. “I didn’t come up with it.”

“Don’t be obstinate. We have others to see to today. You can answer or you can go to the orchards with the _soporati_ and rot.”

The tighter the pull on his muscles, the more he felt the anchor, like a living thing attached to him. Pulsing and flexing against the magic that bound him. “That works. Let’s do that.”

“Theon- Silence.”

It was like having ice water poured into his veins. Not pain, exactly, just cold. Very, very cold. Almost pleasant considering the heat surrounding him.

“ _Fasta vass_ , Silence him, I said.”

“I am-” a lower voice grumbled.

“Then how is he casting?” the dry leaves hissed. “Stop him.”

His teeth jarred, rattling, and Aran dropped into welcome nothingness.

 

* * *

 

He woke as a jolt of force tore through his fingers, buckling and snapping them. He lay flat, stretched on something warm and smooth. His left arm was stretched out to the side, buckled and strapped to a wooden plank. Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

“To think they’d arrest someone like you for buggery, of all things. Look at this.”

Aran turned his head in time to see a metal rod inserted… into… his palm. The anchor flexed and buckled around it and when it was drawn back out, the rod was warm and dripping with a glistening green-gold liquid.

“It is fascinating,” the magister purred, “A relic of the ancients, I believe. You stumbled into something well beyond you, didn’t you, thief? Grasping at what belongs to your betters. Tell me- what was it that created this… aberration? Answer.”

“Nothing you’ll ever get your hands on.”

“Silent. No need to be unpleasant, my boy. You and I are going to do great things together, I believe. Great things.” Thin lips curved above a thick fall of greying beard. “As it happens, I am in the market for a new body slave. To think of what might be possible with just the right amount of tinkering.”

Aran gasped as the rod pressed through the anchor again.

“Of course, the only way to truly test such a thing… happens to be my specialty. We’re in luck.” He lifted the rod, watching the ichor drip, dry, and decay into a fine powder. He tapped it into a jar and set it aside. “Not strength, though. No. I think we’ll just… make this access point a little more accessible, to begin with. And your willfulness… just a touch more agreeable. Liviana, if you would be so kind.”

Move. Move. He screamed in his head, urging any part of himself to fight the damned compulsion as he felt the magister’s too-smooth hand touch his shoulder.

“Be a good lad and swallow. It sounds like that’s one of your other skills.” To call the expression a smile was to call a dragon a lizard. It was hateful, self-satisfied, and the only joy it held was reserved for the owner of those too-thin lips. “Perhaps we’ll put those to the test someday as well. Drink.”

Aran gagged as the rim of a goblet was pressed to his lips, the liquid poured too quickly for him to swallow, eking out the sides of his mouth as his throat worked eagerly at its command.

“Careful, Liviana. Let’s not waste it.”

Lyrium. Fuck. Lyrium? It only made the anchor less painful, not- he coughed as the goblet was removed and replaced by another.

“Drink,” the voice said again and Aran did. Despite everything inside of him screaming otherwise.

He’d ingested more lyrium in minutes than he’d had in his whole life. He felt light-headed, his teeth chattering with energy, heart racing. Every nerve in his body was alight, humming, and the anchor felt like it was- like it was- He couldn’t think. Good. Maker, he felt good. Alive, viscerally alive, like he could tear at the core of existence with his teeth and come away bloodier, stronger.

“That’s a good boy. That’s it. Drink up, my lad. There’s so very much to do.”

Another goblet. Then another.

He couldn’t see beyond the flashes of light that speckled and danced around him. He could hear past the rushing of his own blood in his veins, too much, too much. Too much of everything. His body ached for release- too much blood, too much air, too much cum, too much thought. Get it out, get it out. Not enough space. Nothing but the flickering lights; everything else fading to black. His body felt molten, melting, melding into that darkness and expanding outwards, outwards. The buzz and rush of his blood were calming. Sweet, almost. Crystalline bells singing gently through and around him.

The anchor- the anchor- he was supposed to- He stared at his hand. Not a hand. Just energy. Prismatic and beautiful. Maker, so beautiful he wept, his tears catching the fragments of colorful energy and drawing them through his eyes. Faster, faster- Not the Maker. Andraste. Her arms unfolding, unfolding, so many welcoming arms outstretched. This. This was it. What he was meant for. This love, eternal, endless, expanding and containing him. She was beautiful, smiling at him, everywhere close and far away. Her hair was pure gold - flowing back in the direction from which she’d come like a cape, a gown, a bridal gown, yes, infinite and soft. Her eyes were light, pure and warm. Her voice was a symphony of rain and birdsong, spring waves lapping against wooden boats, laughter and sighs and the whisper of whiskers against his skin.

“This is the work of His hands,” she sang to him, “this world and the others, the Fade that connects them and the Veil that binds them, and every creature of every place. This is the work of His hands.”

Aran couldn’t breathe, didn’t need to, he could rest in the hollow of her throat and dream for the rest of time.

No. Not- not time. No. Her arms around him felt too tight, stretching and grasping.

“They don’t need you, my love. The work is done.”

“But I need them-” He shuddered, his voice like blood-speckled gravel wet with mud. “I need them.”

His eyes shot open. Not- no. Fire- contained fire? Corners? Faces covered in patterns, chaos, a whirlpool of color and light. Was the ceiling… breathing? Everything moved in different directions- the floor from the wall, separating at the seams like rent cloth. Too much- a slender silver blade was spinning closer, closer, freezing in time and space, then rapidly jarring forward again like water, like metal being poured into a frame, like quicksilver. Quicksilver.

Light. His eyes moved on their own, separate, rotating upwards, upwards, upwards into that light, warm and welcome. There. “Andraste, bless me-” he whispered.

“Close your eyes and drink,” she whispered, sounding like autumn.

“It’s too much, too much, I can’t-” he whispered as liquid lightning touched his tongue, rattled down his throat. “I can’t see- can’t take- can’t-” It spilled over his lips, down his chin, freezing heat and molten ice.

“Close your eyes and trust me.” She is beautiful, more beautiful than anything, more- Was that right? No- too soft. Too soft? Broad muscles shifting in the mid-day sun, sweat like tears, the scent of coriander- She embraced him and he felt bathed in that light. His worries faded like smoke. Love. He was loved. He closed his eyes.

And he could see her again, feel her. Her arms wrapped around him, fingers moving over his chest, his arms. Her touch was like gossamer wings, electric and barely there. A warm pulse that beat stronger and stronger through his body. Body. He had one again. Tight and aching. Ah, Void and damnation, but he was aching, his skin starved for touch. “Close your eyes, darling. Close your eyes, don’t you trust me?”

“I- yes, I do, of course, I do, I- it’s so much, so- I can’t-”

“You’re safe here, don’t worry.” Her lips brushed his and he shuddered, pleasure dragging ragged nails under his skin. She was holding him, smiling, gazing into his eyes, the soft white light of her gaze pouring over and through him.

“Fuck,” he swore, her warmth enveloping him in a summer rain. Wrong. Something was wrong. What was it? Her lips were candied petals, sweet and bitter.

“His hands have made you. Made you for me.”

Soft, warm, wet heat sliding, sliding-

“I am with you, always. Let go-”

“I am ready, I am, I can- I-”

She faded away from him, darkness cloaking her warm light like a rolling fog. “Let go,” she whispered.

He could feel the pleasure build, expand, lapping like growing tides. Gentle. Gentle, until it tore at him, teeth and heat and nails rending him fleshless. His body buckled, collapsed on itself.

He found himself in the middle of a shallow tide pool, warm water lapping his calves. He was too hot, too hard, couldn’t think- the Fade stretched around him like waves and hills. He fumbled, aching, wrapping a hand around his straining cock. “Maker, Andraste-” he shuddered. Release. He needed- needed- He felt stretched, his skin shivering, his hand on himself too good and not enough. He braced against the stones, stroking himself harder. Not enough. Not enough. His buckling, shuddering palm seemed to soak more and more from the ground where he touched. Energy flowing into him, heat building through his muscles, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck-”

A sound like glass breaking, soft and shuddering, dragged his gaze up.

Molten brown eyes, full lips open just so beneath a soft curl.

“Dorian,” Aran groaned.

“Ah, damn.”

Living bloody art, beautiful, hungry, he was so fucking hungry- was that it? Eager. No, hungry. He wanted to swallow the man whole, drink and drag and delve. “Please- please, please, fuck me, I don’t care- I don’t care-”

“Very nice. This place keeps getting more and more clever.”

"I need it, please, help me-" Aran stumbled forward, breath hitching. He couldn’t stop- couldn’t stop- “Please, I need you-”

Dorian’s jaw tightened. “As if.” He turned away. “Off you go now.”

The curve of his body beneath robes, bare shoulder gleaming in the Fadelight, hard, firm, strong, right, right- Aran catapulted forward, pressing against his spine. Contact- sweet, glorious contact- just there - the press of his swollen, dripping cock against that silk-clad hip. “Yes- off-” he bucked, mindless, rutting. Moaned as Dorian turned towards him, pressing in to kiss that damned mustache that made him ache, kiss those lips, delve, dive, lick and suck.

Dorian’s hands stroked up his sides, Tevene curses peppering their kiss, as Aran rocked against him. Calloused fingers stroked his bare chest, his shoulders. “No. Not again. No-”

“Dorian-” Aran groaned, pressing his body into those hands. Yes. More. Never enough. He felt Dorian’s fingers close around his throat, moaned, leaning in-

Blistering agony. Pain. Pain. Pain. Flesh melting to muscle. Muscle to bone.

Then blissful, empty darkness.


	7. as free as the wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aran is saved from the magister in the Imperium, but the price of his survival is eternal. (9:40 Dragon)

Sorrow gazed at the broken body in the pool. Cracked from the air like the yolk of an egg to drop into sacred waters. It was still. Human. It bore no apparent will. It was only… meat. Meat that bore a mark of magic that was familiar to him. It stank of the Fade, inside and out, the left side of its body raw, bloody, and blackened.

How had this come to pass? What was its purpose here, now, disturbing their slumber? She had called it to them, he knew that much. Drawn this broken creature across some strange distance to cradle it to her breast. All-mother, protector of the People, why would you choose one of these quicklings? Like dragons, they savage, fearsome pretty things.

He felt the others arrayed around the pool’s edge, watching. Watching him. Waiting for an answer. The priests had gone. What knowledge they could have bestowed was tainted now by this… thing. This body, leaking blood, ooze, and pure lyrium into their memories. The waters swirled around him, misting and half-formed into eddies and whirlpools, pressing all that had escaped the creature back. Back. Into him. Flowing into the slices in his form with a will all their own.

The room sang with their discordant relief. The water surged, turning to mist as it broke over them all, leaving nothing but the damp outline of the Well and the body that lay where it had once been.

“Get it out. She has handed it into our arms for protection and we will preserve it.”

The body had been flayed. The lines were thin but long; shallow blades had traced the man’s veins and the flesh folded back easily to lay wide, seeping molten silver sparkling with blue powder. Lyrium. Old rituals of transformation. The trails leading towards the mark that whispered fragments of the old songs.

The creature did not wake as they debrided the burns at its throat. It did not whimper as they drew the needles from its collar and smoothed salves to leach out poisons. It did not move as they bound the long shallow cuts with pastes and bandages. Time passed as it was meant to. Many of the others returned to their slumber. Sorrow waited.

He knew when the quickling returned to itself. Its screams echoed through the sacred halls, sharp and shearing. Staccato bursts of terror.

Sorrow watched, silent, in the doorway as the body buckled and lit from within, scream after scream released as flesh folded. Stitches tore. Bandages were ripped free and thrown across the room.

“Should we calm it?” Grief asked.

“It is Hers. She will calm it if She wills it so.”

The screams were grating and they lasted, on and on, shattering the tranquility of the temple and its inhabitants. Then one day, the screaming ceased. Sorrow returned to the room to find the creature folded into a corner, its back pressed against the stone, bread stuffed into its mouth. A beast, little more.

“ _Andaran atish’an, sa Mythal’enaste_ ,” Sorrow spoke. “I am Abelas.”

Its cheeks were full like a squirrel’s. Its eyes wide and ever-changing, shifting between shades of blue and green and black as the deepest ocean by moonlight. Its body bore Mythal’s marks upon its left, gleaming and glowing. “ _Andaran atish’an_ -” it echoed, barely audible. “What- who-”

“We are sentinels. We awaken only when called and each time the world is more foreign than before. It is meaningless. We endure. To preserve the _vir’abelesan_. But it exists no longer. It resides within you.”

The creature swallowed. It’s voice strengthening to dust and the crack of stones falling from a great height, “ _Vir’abelesan_?”

“It is a path, walked only by those who toil in Mythal’s favor. Your path, now.” He waited. “So our task becomes the preservation of you.”

The creature blinked. It turned its luminescent gaze from him to its hand, a bright beacon at the end of scarstreams. “Preserve… me?”

“Yes.”

It laughed, like glass shattering, like waves crashing thunderously against stone cliffs. Loud, low, erratic, and endless, shuddering eventually into hushed, ragged breaths. It glowed with light and abated. “She is lost,” it whispered. “Not I. If you would save one, preserve Her. Praise Her name forever.”

“We will. And yet She brought you to us.”

The creature flexed its hand, frowning. “Did She? Was it Her? Not- Yes. Perhaps it was. Yes. But why?”

“That, I cannot answer.”

“I would check the wounds again,” Humility said, “if you can remain still.”

The creature looked towards the cot that was soaked in its own blood, dried brown and gleaming silver. “As you will.”

Sorrow watched as it knelt, bowing its head, and allowed Humility to prod at its flesh. “I will leave you,” he said, watching her draw needle and thread to replace the torn stitches.

“Please, before you go-” It was growing stronger, holding still as its flesh was sewn. “Who am I?”

“Listen,” Sorrow told it, “and She will tell you.”

 

* * *

 

“ _Ar ena’sal_ , Merciful All-mother, _amelan_. I beg that thou might bend to me thine ear, let my supplications ascend to thee in thy hidden place. What path is thy will? Come, thou Protector of All. If it is thy will that I am thy hands, thy mouth, then speak, Lady of Life and Mercy, that I might serve thee in earnest.”

With every relighting of the braziers, it rested its forehead to the stained stones where it had landed among them, repeating the same pleas. With every relighting of the braziers, it waited, fingers splayed, bent in supplication. Its hair - white as the sages - grew to mark the passage of time. Inch by inch. Braid by braid.

“ _Eolas'esayelan,_ ” Sorrow called. “It is time.”

It lifted its head, its shoulders dropping in regret, and stood. It took the offered bow and spear and joined the others in their daily prayers. Hunt and spar. Learn the hidden paths through dusk and shadow.

Day by day.

She had called it to them, brought it back to life and given it knowledge without purpose. Now it, like them, waited in a sense of bated breath, thrumming like salmon in a net. He wondered, as they all did, if they should return to their slumber soon. There had been no further intrusions to the sanctuary. The Arbor Wilds were as calm as Wilds could be.

Hour by hour.

“She holds Her counsel still?” Humility asked one night as the stars sang ancient tunes above them.

It stroked its blade with the sharpening stone. Its sorrow seemed lighter these days, replaced with the peace that comes with submission. _Halam’shivanas_. “She does,” it answered. It did not ask questions. Perhaps this was the problem. It only waited, waited, waited. Perhaps that was what She desired. This permissive holding pattern. The will of the priests and Mythal herself echoed in his veins like distant rain; if anyone were to know the means by which she might give answer, surely it was this thing She had brought to them. And yet.

“The first question you asked- have you asked it again?” Sorrow inquired.

It looked at the blade of the spear, testing the sharpness of the edge with its thumb. “I have listened.”

“And?”

Her light suffused its form, catching its cracked marble jaw and tendrils of snow vines in a silverblue hue, flickering. “ _Raging storms, evil gods are they, ruthless demons created in the deepest vaults, are they, workers of evil are they, they lift their heads to evil, every day to evil, destruction to work,_ ” it said, its voice full of whispers. “ _Their mouths are open, that none can measure. A furious Wolf, who knoweth not to flee, it marches against god and king, carrying off the young. Go to him. Go to the altar. The storm, the evil wind, take vengeance, from city to city, darkness work they, hurricanes mightily hunting the heavens are they, stalking in the height of dark city spires are they, like lightning flashing to wreak destruction as forward they go. Day and night without ceasing, it is ordained to stand in the dark, the dwelling of its dominion, it sat not, raising its head in the night to shake itself. The tamed Fox, forerunner to the baneful storm. It dashes, house to house. No door may shut it out, no bolt may turn it back. Through the doors, like snakes, it glides. Through the hinges, like the wind, it storms. Presaging the baneful storm. The high enclosures, the broad enclosures, it will pass through. From the heavens, like wind, over the land rush they. My message unto the ocean bring, and unto the sun, who in the sky has sadly darkened. Bite at thine lips and fill thy mouths with wailing for this is my call, her call, her Calling: she is lost, darkening. Kindness and mercy they do not know. Go to him. Prayer and supplication they do not hear. Throne-bearers of the gods are they, befouling all. Robber-gods, gods of the universal away, evil and violent, mighty children. Evil are they, evil are they- The cavern in the mountain sky they enter, throne-stealers, disturbing the lily in the torrents, baleful are they, baleful are they. Order and compassion they know not. Go to him. She speaks. May the spirits of the earth remember, remember she is lost. She has fallen._ ”

Sorrow watched the light flex and dampen in it, Her creature, its hands still toiling at sharpening the spear, it’s expression unchanging.

“Nothing,” it said. “Still nothing.”

Humility and Grief met Sorrow’s gaze. “Take heed, _Eolas'esayelan_ ,” he said, “for She has spoken.”

It looked up with surprise writ on its features. “How? When?”

“ _Hale_ ,” Grief said.

“Fox, forerunner.” Humility stood. “A record, yes?” She gathered parchment and quill. “It is right that the ink should be of his and Hers.”

The fox slipped its thumb deeper on the edge and knelt beside her, holding its bleeding hand aloft for use. “What call has She given?” it asked.

“War,” said Sorrow, watching. “She has called for War.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1: I have stolen bits of prophecy from ‘The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia’, which is one of the oldest texts about monsters and demons that exist today. Thank you, Stuff They Don’t Want You To Know.
> 
> 2: This is not the end of the time-traveling segment. Please continue on to 'never let me go' for Aran's foray into the periphery of Khirsah's beautifully brilliant Voice-Verse: [**never let me go**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16531853) (14564 words) by [**oftachancer**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oftachancer)  
>  Rating: Mature  
> Additional Tags: Multiverse, Time Travel, Mythal's Servant, Angst, hurt and healing, Prophecies, Peripheral Storylines  
> Series: Part 5 of [here in this moment](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1162070)  
>   
> 3\. Chapter 8 of this series picks up after the events of Never Let Me Go (Ch 1-7)


	8. come to my window

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back to the tumultuous timestream! 
> 
> The following chapter is a Cole POV that references events earlier in this series and also mirrors Chapter 3 of Watching You (https://archiveofourown.org/works/16328492/chapters/38231015).
> 
> In addition, it comes directly after the events of Never Let Me Go (https://archiveofourown.org/works/16531853/chapters/38726912), which references the Voice-Verse created by Khirsah and delazeur. For their work - specifically the elements of their universe that I got all ink-inspired over - go read By Any Other Name (https://archiveofourown.org/works/7566736). 
> 
> Somehow - don't ask me - in trying to write a weaving, wobbly, wigged out time traveling story, I appear to have ended up with a lot of reference materials. Aran would be so pleased. 
> 
> There are references here, as earlier in this series, to torture and drugs and all kinds of awful, so if that kind of thing wigs you out I would suggest skipping ahead.

**From[Never Let Me Go: Breaking Mirrors-](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16531853/chapters/44690794)**

_“This doesn’t bode well.”_

_The voice brought Aran’s head up with a snap. It couldn’t be. Not here. Not-_

_“Should have brought Varric-“_

_He blinked. Was that- He turned slowly, carefully… and there he was. All awkward angles and jovial frankness. Cocky brogue. Nervous courage._

_Not. Possible._

_Was it?_

_This place… the tavern, the lake, the castle ahead… Redcliffe. It had to be. If it in any way mirrored his world then this was… and yet he’d been… Well, he’d been in a temple and then the sea. And before that, he’d been in fits and starts, snatches of memories, places, and faces. So this could be… anything. Anywhere. Anytime. Only. It had to be Redcliffe. That tavern. He was sure he recognized it. And the tower in the lake._

_The monster of Lake Calenhad._

_“All-Mother… I don’t know if you’re here, or if you can hear me, or if this is some kind of sick joke, but - ” Only the sounds of the laughing drunks near the shore answered him. “I am so very fucked.”_

* * *

 

From the tents in the courtyard, I watched them. The litany of lies took light, smoldering in the snow. A hand on an arm. Quiet words. The pain pulls- sharp and dark, like daggers, spearing through the mage’s sparkling core and leaving shadows in its wake. Not the words turning to ash, but the person behind them. Fear, pain, horror, betrayal.

Dorian is supposed to be dashing and daring, dawn for the dawn that came. The Inquisitor is carefully balanced between light and dark, still too fragile from the fall and the fall that came after. We need him to be strong, to teach others to be strong. To light the way. He can. I know. I saw shining power gleaming gilded to guide. His flame is new now; it might be bright, but too much wind, winding, whispering might whistle him away.

What they don’t understand when they whisper, wondering, worried that I am not what I seem- I know him. Solas listened when I told him so, alas, nodded wisely, thinking and tinkering. But it doesn’t matter if they know or believe. What is... is. I know we have a purpose. People to help. And beyond these walls, more people will be helped if I am with Aran Trevelyan - the last and lost, the one who asks and listens - than without. We are the same and not. We take the pain into ourselves. Pain is not easy to carry. We solve riddles that harm and hamper. Riddles can be difficult, too.

So I am secret, then, and follow faintly, feeling the mage’s need for privacy. Aran always manages to pass through the boundaries others put up for their solitude; he doesn’t take space but donates room to breathe. And Dorian- flash, and gleam, warm and hesitant. Hesitating. Hiding hesitation behind color and spark. No darkness there, not like the Inquisitor, but dim. Dampened. That shouldn’t be. He has to be fire and sparkling things to keep the Inquisitor in the light with him. Doesn’t he?

The red cliffed town is ragged memories - Blights and banners and bindings. But it is soft, too, with hope. Laughter.

They linger in lamplight in front of the tavern - glitter and moongleam. I like watching them twist and test, but there… something else. Something - past the tavern’s entrance, beneath evening’s blanket of shadow between the trees, huddled against the bark, there are familiar unfamiliar eyes peering, leering, leaking, speaking. The creature is splinters and shards, blinding bright in endless infinite. Furs and borrowed armor over scars and horror. A face I have just seen mirrored in Dorian’s eyes. A face I haven’t seen for a decade. No- whispers whistling through the wreckage, but not the Whisperer. Not yet.

_Is that him?_

I know the sound of him, brogue and brash, but he is broken now - tangled thoughts tearing.

_Gods, he looks the same, but memory lies- Time lies-_

Piece by piece. Drip by dripping drop. Puzzles within puzzles. That lost and knowing gaze tracks, seeks, locks on to the lower story window and follows with form to watch and wait.

_Beautiful. He’s fucking beautiful. And alive, viscerally. Alive and here - only twenty feet away, if that. Tangible. Touchable. Breathable. And that- can that be me? Was I ever that- no. Another broken mirror. Another not quite. Impossible-_

Hateful harm. He shudders, seeking, seeing shadows. Hears the name that fuels him, fills him - Dorian - but it is _darkness dropping. Similar not same yet the syrup drips, drips, drips like venom into his ears._

_‘Grasping at what belongs to your betters.’_

His nails dig into the windowsill, wood splintering. Splinters into splinters.

Aran and not Aran. Not like when the shadow rode him. Not a creature inside breaking out. He is the creature breaking in. Parts and patchwork, fickle Fade fractals fragmenting. Time. It bends around and through him, making up the silk threads that snake and seize. Godbound and lyrium-lit, eyes lost to impossible mountains. Aran and not Aran. He creeps, creaking.

_My name! That’s my name! My heart! Mine! Can’t let them take it. Quicksilver. No, Hale. No. Aran. Aran. Brother, son, heralded- fuck. Names have power. Names are- what-what-what-_

He can’t focus on the room inside. Can only focus on his skin and scars and the memory of the hard table and the unfamiliar ceiling: those sights behind his eyes are pulling, prying, and he can’t drag his gaze away from them.

_Past or future. Neither? Never. Never again. Trick of the Fade, wasn’t it always?_

He presses his face to the rough-hewn exterior of the tavern like a lover. Touch. He always touches things to think. But thinking makes him scream now, the screeching scratching sound echoing down into his throat as he swallows the sandpaper like brandy, burning. Clinging to the windowsill like the spider and the fly. His muscles ache from tension.

 _Tanning the leather just a few days ago. Swimming that morning in the seas of his homeland._ _‘You’re a long way from home, Free Marcher,’_ venomous liquid lilting in his mind. _The scent of baked copper filling his mouth, throat, nose- ‘To think they’d arrest someone like you for buggery, of all things.’_

He coils beneath the window, folding into his fractals.

_Shit, shit, shit._

Bound, brittle, breaking- He wants to scream; he can’t draw breath. His muscles seize - stone. Pins and needles. The agony of stillness.

_The smile is a dragon- hateful, self-satisfied, too thin. ‘Be a good lad and swallow.’_

_-cold, sold, thick gold._ _‘For your trouble,’ Dorian in the dark. A kiss. A closing door._

_-he feels the steel stealing, sliding, gliding, in and out, sticky with the shifting, drifting dregs of the Fade._

_You think you want to drown and dive,_ I tell his muddled mind. Regret the remembered darkness.

 _More cold, more fucking pain_.

_Enough._

_Enough._

“Enough,” he snarls.

_T_ _hat vile smile-_

_he dips and weaves-_

_pure lightning pours liquified down his throat._

 

“Enough,” whispers, weaker, strapped and wrapped in rings of wrong. He can move now, can’t he? Well-used blades at his thighs and waist. The friendly feel of steel.

 _The same and not at all,_ I see him. Know. He is neither Inquisitor nor Whisperer. New. Nicked and naked nerve-endings. All raw. _Ahead. You think you’re lost, but I can find you._

“Fuck off,” my fractal friend hisses.

_Crystalline bells singing, stringing, stinging. Power in his veins. Opening._

_Open_

_open open_

_open-_

_slip, slide, and slice,_

_peeling his flesh like the skin of an orange, bearable and terrible._

_Blood like ripe juice sluices, smeared with silvery threads._

_Mercury. Quicksilver._

_‘This is the work of His hands.’_

_He can feel the pleasure build, expand, lapping like growing tides._

_Gentle._

_Gentle, until it tears at him, teeth and heat and nails rending him fleshless._

His snow-capped head lowers slowly, shoulders dropping down and back, blades in his hands. Cold, hard, welcome weight. Sharp to the touch. Clean steel. He has to make it stop. All of it. Fucking Tevinter. Fucking Halward. Fucking Danarius- He gags, gasps, heaves bile even as he thinks the name.

The slide of a stool’s legs against the wood floor, boots coming towards the window. Can’t- I am there in thought, form, standing between the past and future, “There are lights.”

The Inquisitor pauses mid-step, half-laughing. “Cole? What are you doing here?”

“By the water, there are lights and laughter.” I am only half-there. I listen to the shadow in the shadows.

_The lilting voice from inside his head only moments before. Cole. He knows that voice. That name. Knew?_

_Guiding him through the frozen tunnels, moving through him like a breeze to warm and ward._

_Wanted. Watched. Haunted._

“I haven’t thanked you yet, have I?” the Inquisitor asks, gilded and guileless.

“You hurt,” I am distracted. “I stopped it.”

“You did,” the doppelganger laughs. “You really did.”

“Go now.”

“I know better than to ignore you, but Dorian’s upstairs. I’m not going to leave him.”

“Leave with him. Learn and live.”

“You’re becoming my fairy godmother, you know that, right?”

The fractal fractures. I feel it- shards splintering, wintering cold and frozen. Feral features loom up and through the window. Fade-eyes wild beneath the fox fur hood. Unkempt white hair curling past gaunt cheeks. Too slow, the Inquisitor sees his moonlit shadow and reaches for his blade.

_Unpracticed. Undisciplined._

The wild one presses his advantage, covering his doppelganger’s mouth, pressing the sharp line of his curved dagger to that unmarred throat. He holds himself hostage.

“I’ll stop you.” I reach, wringing outrage. He knows me. He’s forgotten that he’s the one who remembers.

_Skin prickles, flesh tightens. ‘I’ll take you.’_

_He holds his breath, waiting, wondering, wishing. 'Let me in.' A hand like gentle lightning._

_Warm wind filling him, lifting him, carrying him forward._

I am comfort and desire. I am… lost as he is lost. I have a mind for misery, called by my calling. And this is… different. New. To him, I am not the comfort of compassion or desire for deliverance. I am not what I do, I… _am_. Fog and incomprehensible fervor, fever…

“You don’t know-” he hisses - seawind through sawgrass - “You haven’t seen. This is better. This can save us.”

“No.” He knew my name. He remembered. I heard him hurting, herded him, halting, hating… he knew me without knowing me. We are the same. We are not the same at all.

The Inquisitor struggles in his shadow’s grip, his shouts muffled by leather and pressure. “Shut up,” he snarls against the familiar ear. “You don’t understand, but I’m doing you a favor. I can end this here. Keep us _here_. I can let us die happy. I can end _everything-_ ”

He gasps when I clasp, grasp him from the side, unseen. I spill his shards on the floor, collect them to me like the precious things that they are. Keys. Puzzle pieces. “Remember-” I tell him, and he does.

_Sliding through him, warm wind sweeping through his organs, his muscles, his skin;_

_he feels like a kite, so much cloth stretched on an endless summer wind._

_A low moan as he feels fluttering lungs shifting beside and inside his own,_

_a second heartbeat beating too fast… or was that his own?_

_Possession? If it’s like this, I don’t care-_

“Cole-” the Inquisitor glanced back towards the stairs at the sound of footsteps. “What-”

“Forget,” I tell him and I don’t look back. In front of me, there is a wild storm of Fade and finding, feeling, ferreting out the memories of me from those fractured halls. They resonate between gold and moonlight; the same mind, one cracked and one complete.

The Inquisitor, soon gone, blond and blue and bashful. He blinks at the blade in his hand in surprise, wandering back to the stool he had perched on to idly dance the dagger on the back of his hand.

“We can go now,” Dorian tells him, lost in thought, walking to and through the door. The leader sheaths his blade and follows.

Surreal, one leaving without their shadow. I kneel, peer and prod.

_Overlapping, shifting and imperfect. Summer breeze hands. Eyes like the midday sky._

Surreal, this shadow that has been shadowing me. He wheezes, his gaze traveling to the stairs, the ceiling. He still has his daggers. He won’t let them go.

“No.” I peel the fur away to find the face. Furious. Fadeswept. “Let me in.” I open his collar and he is stung, still, humming like a strummed string. I trace the scar-dark handprint at his throat, flickers of fear and fire. Warmth. Touch. Acceptance. Forgiveness. It presses into and through him, and there isn’t space within for the cold any longer.

Heat, though. Heat he still has plenty of. “You know what he did,” breathless, unbound, the fire fixates him; he points the tip of his blade to the ceiling.

“To Dorian,” he is the tide he is afraid of. “What he would have, might have, didn't. Not here. Not to him. Not to you. Not- _Teeth chattering with energy- heart racing- melting, melding with darkness- the lights lead you astray- ‘This is the work of His hands.’ She is more beautiful than you could imagine- freezing heat and molten ice-_ You think wrong again.”

“ _You_ think wrong,” he snarls. “You _heard_ them. He’s a fucking blood mage. He deserves to die. They all deserve to die.”

“Forget,” if it is the only way. My fingers find his forehead.

“No!” He buzzes like a flurry of bees, his mind a humming hive of hate.

_Memory, light and sound, flashes of color and seizing, sickening pain- need- free. Release. Out._

The walls are splashed with flickering green light; his palm buckles. Power presses, pushes me away.

“Forget.” The pain inside him is heavy and dense- molasses mud molding. He wants free of it. I feel that he needs to be free- but he fights me. Flees.

“I’ll protect them. All of them. Him. Even if it makes him hate me, I will.” He struggles- first to his knees, then his feet, ignoring the jarring pain in his bones, in his head, as he runs for the stairs.

“Forget!” I demand this time instead of asking. “Aran, let me in. Let me-”

I wanted him to face me, feel me, forget and soothe the storm. But he looks with Fadelight shining, fading to blue out of true silver. “ ** _You_ let _me_** **in** ,” he tells me. Fells me.

I do. _Possible impossible._ He is there, thick and quick, filling and spilling through thoroughly- _You knew my name. You- Pleading, pressure- prying light out of the darkness. I came when he called, crying, caught. I couldn’t help. I tried. I couldn’t- wasting, wishing, why why-why- Innocent. He was innocent and I couldn’t help. They_ hurt _him. They tried to hurt me. You took me, shook me, and I wanted to help you. There was light there: hope - the rarest - warming everything around you. I wanted to help. Be bright. Bring brightness with me. I felt it from the tower, from the storms, and I followed, fueled, had to find- there. You. I was forgotten and you remembered. You saw and sought. Looked upon with longing. So many little hurts. So many terrible ones. They blur and blend. Different. Different then. Different than, in the dark, in blood and battle, bruised battered broken. Different now, close and far; I can see the path. You’re_ not _alone. You’re here. You’re with me. I can help, if you let me. Let me. I hear your pain and I will answer it, but you have to let me._ Trapped. _Trapped like the boy Cole. Trapped by the man I was trying to protect. Trapped inside me, inside the world of edges and walls. Almost like the Fade, feeling through the fabric, far and fickle._ And it is… anathema. Impossible and horrifying. I am not free or me, and I cannot look from the mirror of those eyes- not Fade, not nearly, and not nice or neat, but wild, weary. _You said you wouldn’t hurt me. You said you might forget._

We wind surrounded, drowned by bindings and betrayal. Terror trips between us, resonating and rebounding. Memories melding, blending in a slow, awful storm. Turbulent and torturous, but there is… light… there too. Light in us both. Warmth where there should be none.

Without explanation.

Without precedent.

Hope.

“Well, well, what have we here?” Halward’s voice slides through our mixed mind, restless fury spiraling in its wake.

He tears himself from me, tries, tangled, and I, all unbound, attend; Fadelight flashing from him to blind and balk, green and gleaming. He pours forward; Halward Pavus’ back cracks against the stairs. Growling, he knocks the staff aside, pinning both the mage’s arms to the floor. “Was it fun?” Spiteful. “Having him at your mercy?” Sneering.

“Who- I didn’t- I never-” he lies, lying prone, baffled.

“He trusted you and you betrayed him. Did you practice on your servants? On prisoners?” Agony. Rust. “Or were you just going to wing it, tear his mind apart with your fucking lyrium ritual and see- what- happened?” He smashes his forehead into the other man’s face, crushing, blood smearing their faces. Painted pain.

“I didn’t want to-”

“Didn’t you,” he pulls his collar back to show the flow of pulsing lyrium within his flesh. It glows like starlight, moves like liquor, stings like venom. He is becoming it and doesn’t know. “Didn’t you want to see what you could do? Another little Void-damned experiment. Didn’t you want to fill him with poison so that it spilled, spoiled, and made him the monster you yearned for?”

“Demon-” Halward whispers, and he is not wrong. He is not right. He is human. Flawed. They both are. Mostly.

“I am _Hale Mythal’enaste Eolas’esayelan,_ you piece of shit,” blue mist seeps from Aran’s skin, soaking, startling, stolen from his starlight gaze, “I am the guardian of guardians, shield of the protector, fox and finder, and you are the rat whose neck I’ll break first.”

His blade arcs like the moon, but it is my hand that brings it down - into the wood of the stair just beside Halward’s face. “ ** _Go now. Don't come back. Forget._ ** ”

Halward hears me, heeds me, and hurries from the haunted tavern.

It isn’t possible to keep Aran still, so I run with him, within him. Away. An empty room. A closed door. His rage resonating through us both.

It is tempting - that deep well of darkness, that ancient ruthless yearning for reprisal - but I can’t. Cast my body boldly against the door, blades free, wary. “You told me revenge wouldn’t save me. It won’t save you either.”

“That monster-”

“Hate makes the monster in you.”

Aran stutters, stumbles, stares.

“You said you wouldn’t bind me. ‘ _Stay, say you will, you don’t know me but I need you. We all do.’_ I was forgotten but you remembered. You knew his name. You knew mine. Now you’ve forgotten both.”

“Cole…” he whispers, wishing. Wants. But he is in his own tide, biding time, and what is remembered must surface like driftwood. He can’t think. He sinks.

_Her touch is gossamer. Thrilling. Killing. A warm pulse through his blood bones body- reassembled._

_Tight and aching. Ah, Void and damnation, his skin starves._

_‘Close your eyes, don’t you trust me?’_

_Pleasure drags ragged nails across him, peeling purifying- glory wonder awe sweat heat yearning learning craving touch-_

_he wants so much- it laps more of him with every singing wave-_

_gentle, gentle as it tears- teeth and heat and nails rending him fleshless-_

_He is too hot, too hard - Fade-etched -_

_he is cloth billowing, a kite in flight-_

_he fumbles, aching._

_Not enough. Never. Need. Greed._

_Feed._

_He stretches, skin shivering,_

_his hand on himself hot, and good, and not enough._

_His muscles burn, mind churns-_

 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck-”

His torment is tenderness. I take the shaking hand and grasp fast, past the doubt. It is calloused, damp and cramped, flexing. It is… fine. Astonishing. He whines in his throat, clutching my fingers to keep afloat.

“Please.”

It is a hand, only a hand, but brand new. Now. Needed. Necessary. He is shivering sand and stars in the mirrored sea. Seeing me. _You are with me,_ I tell him when his eyes fade, frost, falter. I touch the sunlight in his memory, summon the songs and subtle contentment. And because he is a kite stretched thin, I phase again, what he thinks of as wind. Fill. Still. Reprise the rising summer breezes on the modest dinghy, the silvery fish beneath the shivering surface, the salt spray and scent of simple solitude.

I have walked within him before, waded waiting. But this Aran is a prism of dynamism, making solid what should be insubstantial, and I can feel his muscles untense, tended, one by one, wondrous and wondering, verging and merging with my signified form. Simmering.

He is breathless again, lungs fluttering alongside mine. Full and firming. He thinks my name, the name of the boy. His toes flex alongside mine.

It is… elasticity and equity. Edges that mean endlessness. Sore muscles- hungering flesh- the groan of an unfilled belly- the flex of lungs filling with air, sudden and marvelous. Need. Every inch and segment starving for something. Food. Water. Air. Touch. Earth. Sea. Sky. And to each of these, I am the answer.

Startled, I step when he stands, emerging as the gasp he draws.

“Cole...” I do not need to look to know he reaches, fingers like reeds.

He doesn’t want me to alleviate the aches in his heart, his mind, his scars within and without. He just… wants.

Me.

It is… possible impossible?

“Can you take me away from here?” he asks, fearing that he has done too much for forgiveness. "I- Cole, I'm- not-"

I stretch my hand back, not daring to look at him, and find the reeds resting in the restless waters between us. Tangle. Twist.

He exhales, and it is his wind that moves me forward, stretched like a kite, into the night.

 


End file.
